How Every Generation Gets Better
The VISION 2021 Series highlights how our members are shaping their future visions with key lessons from 2020. This conversation is with Joanna Bartholomew, who is the Founder and CEO of O’Hara Development Partners. We discuss how transformative real estate can be a tool for building intergenerational wealth, as well as the importance of educational resources for people to invest in and heal their own communities.
A young Joanna Bartholomew watched her father make his morning tea with raised eyebrows. She looked on as the teabag rose to the cup’s rim. After witnessing the frequency of this ritual — her father’s tea overflow onto the saucer — Joanna asked why he let that happen.
Her father revealed this practice was spiritually intentional: it was his way of manifesting that their family and community live in abundance.
Unlike in the United States, Joanna says that buying land and building houses in the Carribean — specifically for people that looked like her — was considered normal. When her family migrated to the U.S., acquiring property and providing housing opportunities was not uncommon. Joanna often accompanied her father to lumber and material stores, picked up rent money, and totaled the month’s earnings together.
Although Joanna once found these tasks boring, her perception changed as a college student. Conversations with her peers helped Joanna realize that not everyone grew up with the same exposure to real estate and learning wealth principles. “They’d look at me like I was talking another language,” Joanna says.
She developed a deeper understanding about the relationship between her father’s work and morning practice. Having witnessed firsthand how transformative real estate can be as a tool for building intergenerational wealth, Joanna shares that she “wanted people to have the same freedom.”
“Every generation should be the support for a greater generation to come.”
Inspired by her father’s work, Joanna founded O’Hara Development Partners in December 2017. O’Hara Development Partners is “a community development company that focuses on the heart of the people and the quality of their living.” They achieve their mission through renovating and restoring buildings for residential and commercial use in urban neighborhoods.
Joanna shares that authentic and transparent community conversations lay the foundation for any project her company pursues. Her process often involves attending local city meetings, engaging with service based organizations and neighborhood stakeholders, plus attending existing community meetings.
Other times, conversations are less formally structured and take place on neighborhood stoops. Whatever the method, Joanna prioritizes hearing from the heart of the community. “We need to listen to people and build from their voices as much as possible,” she says.
Last July, O’Hara Development Partners hosted a celebration at Impact Hub for the launch of a restoration project in East Baltimore. Currently in progress, this project will restore two blocks — including some historic properties — into a mixed community neighborhood. Among the socially-distanced crowd were directors from city agencies, community stakeholders, and the mayor-elect, Brandon M. Scott.
In her spare time, from leading O’Hara Development Partners and being a phenomenal mother to her 16-year-old “kidpreneur,” Joanna also offers educational resources to increase access to strategies that break wealth barriers.
Her latest digital series titled, “Before You Build,” explores questions around the important factors one should strongly consider before and after they acquire a property; whether one property or a block. While the ebooks are for individuals with varying levels of real estate experience, Joanna’s masterclasses are specifically designed for those ready to scale.
During her most recent workshop series, participants learned from Joanna and developers working from various states on topics from acquisition to creative financing. They were also given access to group coaching and specific guidance on how to build with the community to encourage purposeful real estate projects.
With education requiring action to make a difference, Joanna and the O’Hara Development team has recently launched a national capital campaign for her Baltimore Redevelopment project, Aruka Midway, to open doors for individuals and businesses to invest in their own backyards or those they can relate to.
For Joanna, real estate is more than developing buildings. She describes her sincere passion to see safer, prospering, and healthier communities in urban neighborhoods. “I want to see families engaging and children playing in safer areas, and more minority businesses being supported by their own community,” Joanna expressed. “For people to gain more access to real estate knowledge and grow their capacity to heal their own communities.”
Her hope is that O’Hara Development Partners can serve as a model and economic support system for other community-focused development companies seeking to build with purpose and care. “Being able to sow into others on that level, would bring the greatest feeling of joy. It’s like the living example of what the cup of tea represented for my father,” Joanna says.
And as she continues to expand access to wealth for the community, Joanna adds that she’s thankful that “God has been leading, providing, and protecting us along the way.”
