Georgetown social entrepreneurship nonprofit Halcyon has a new board member — and if you know anything about Greater Washington real estate or, well, Amazon, odds are you’ve heard his name.
JBG Smith Properties (NYSE: JBGS) CEO Matt Kelly joining the 2-year-old nonprofit’s board of directors might sound like an odd match. But, he says, the marriage makes total sense.
“We’re now a bigger player as a company in trying to create more of a technology-driven ecosystem in National Landing and to help bring this market in that direction in general,” Kelly said in an interview Wednesday. “We’ve made it part of our mission to do what we can as a real estate company to effect positive impact from a social standpoint with our housing initiative, and we’re always trying to do things that incorporate the arts into our new development projects, and so the fact that Halcyon has a line in each one of those waters — to me there was a lot of consistency of how we see the world and the things that we want to try to do”
Since Halcyon hit Kelly’s radar a couple of years ago, he said, he became more “intrigued at the combination of entrepreneurship, social impact, and the arts — that they were really trying to advance all of those important areas under one umbrella.”
For Kelly — the Washington Business Journal’s 2017 CEO of the Year — the interest stems from Halcyon’s “investor’s outlook,” and how it applies its mindset to social entrepreneurship, he said. That, and the organization’s focus on advancing women, minorities and other underrepresented groups, were attractive.“
The idea of taking that investor approach to addressing a social need, I find to be very interesting, because I think if those are successful, they can be much more scalable solutions, and the fact that Halcyon is very much oriented in that way was really appealing to me personally,” Kelly said.
What will Kelly bring to the table? For one, his perspective as a business person and investor. “We are a real estate company, that’s our asset class, but within that, we are investors,” he said.Kelly has a 15-year career at JBG, garnering headlines in 2017 for spearheading the $8.4 billion spin-merge of The JBG Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust’s D.C. business to form JBG Smith, the region’s largest locally focused real estate investment trust. He’s now entrenched in all things Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), as his company partnered with the Seattle-based e-commerce and cloud computing giant to bring its second headquarters to Northern Virginia. Before joining JBG in 2004, Kelly co-founded media software company ODAC Inc., and held private equity and investment banking positions at Thomas H. Lee Partners in Boston and Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York.
Kelly is also a member of the Greater Washington Partnership board alongside several prominent local leaders with ties to Halcyon, an S&R Foundation spinout: Sachiko Kuno, co-founder of both S&R and Sucampo Pharmaceuticals — and chair of Halcyon’s board — and Salamander Hotels and Resorts CEO Sheila Johnson, who’s also a Halcyon board member. Adeft Capital CEO Carol Melton, another Halcyon board member, is also on the JBG Smith board.
The Halcyon board also comprises Edens CEO Jodie McLean, Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) Chief Enterprise Services Officer Frank LaPrade, Inspire Capital Managing Director Patrice King Brickman, Carl M. Freeman Cos. CEO Michelle DiFebo Freeman and Arnold & Porter Kay Scholer’s Corporate Finance co-chair Kevin Lavin. It also already has an Amazon presence, with Teresa Carlson, vice president of Amazon Web Services’ worldwide public sector business. Kelly’s scheduled to attend his first board meeting in July.
Halcyon, which runs fellowships and programs for startup founders with social impact missions, has methodically built its brand and bolstered its offerings since 2017. And with that growth has come an entourage of D.C.-area executives, serving as founding partners and mentors to its resident entrepreneurs.
Along with Kelly’s appointment comes a handful of additions to Halcyon’s honorary board, which encompasses advisors with experience in philanthropy, finance, real estate and other areas: Rynthia Rost, Geico vice president of public affairs; Jayne Sandman, founder and co-CEO of Brand Guild; and Mitch Weintraub, managing partner of Cordia Partners.
It all coalesces during a growth period for the organization, as it prepares to launch its second annual By The People arts and dialogue festival June 15-23, the brainchild of Goodall and her team. She’s also leading the nonprofit through a $6 million raise for its first fund. That’s on the heels of a new program launch for international startup founders last summer, while the Halycon team simultaneously explores the prospect of helping other countries develop social enterprise ecosystems abroad.
And there’s always the possibility of collaborations between Halcyon and JBG Smith, for making spaces available to business within Halcyon’s network, Kelly said, adding that that’s ultimately up to Goodall and her team. “Obviously we have a business to run, so my involvement with Halcyon is separate and apart from JBG Smith,” Kelly said. “But if there’s synergy there, those can be real win-win opportunities.”