Donald Manekin is the co-founder of Seawall Development Company. He has worked on community-focused real estate development, civic leadership, and philanthropic missions in the Baltimore-Washington region for more than four decades, serving as the Senior Vice President of Manekin Corporation, the chief operating officer of the Baltimore City Schools, and graduate professor at Johns Hopkins University, M.I.T., and Loyola University Maryland.
Q: What was your purpose, or what made you what to write your book?
A: This idea came from my desire to have our children and their children witness in writing my dad’s life. There was so much in his years to share starting as a young boy and then along with his brother grew a real estate company that was based on exceeding expectations and service to community. In hindsight I waited too long to sit with him and capture his memories, so I have only my memories which are embedded in the book.
For me, the purpose was to capture in words as best I could this 45 plus years’ journey. The opportunities presented, those stakeholders who shared their knowledge and guidance, those I interacted act with, the purpose for our work and the outcomes are all captured in the book as a way for the reader to grasp what is being shared and take these ideas to new heights.
For me the audiences, in addition to our children and the generations to come in our family, are the next group of those who aspire to be leaders on their own or within their organization. They could be found in high schools and colleges/universities at the undergraduate and graduate level as well as their own professional life.
Q: Where did you get the inspiration from for the title of the book?
A: The inspiration for the title comes from the idea that we must listen first and then implement. As I have shared throughout the book none of the ideas for our work have come from us. They all evolved from those that we wanted to serve by listening and engaging them with the outcomes. They were partners and stakeholders in the success. We just used real estate as the means to that end.
Embedded in the title and hopefully felt throughout the book is the centering of putting people and purpose first. It is driven by the mindset that first-person plural, WE, captures the beginning and end of each day.
Q: From your book, a big theme that is brought up and is important to you is your family as well as your community. How much do you think your book would affect or how much do you think your book is going to affect your family and your community?
A: What I was hoping for with capturing my dad’s life (and not realized) and now for me is to leave living legacies by our day to day actions. None should be in the first person singular but the assemblage of thoughts and the witnessing of actions that hopefully will resonate with them.
For those that will read the book, I am hoping that they will take in that their purpose, in addition to their business, should include the effect they can have on the larger world around them. There is much to gain by being a stakeholder in what the present and future have the potential to hold. What role model do we want to be for our children, those that we interact with each day and the larger world.
Q: Your book is about leadership, growing a business which are important aspects in life. What do you think ‘success’ means for you?
A: Success is about engaging, empowering, and witnessing positive outcomes. Success is best understood as a feeling. It shows up when we see the look on the faces of teachers who see their apartments for the first time, the organizations who worked so diligently with us to optimize the work space for their organization and see it finished, it is on the faces of the unsung heroes (architects, contractors municipal employees) who we have publicly acknowledged for making the project happen, it is on the faces of those we work with when they are recognized for having exceeded expectations. It is about celebrating mistakes as a platform for learning.
Q: What do you think your future would look now since you are releasing your first book and how is Seawall Development going to look like moving forward?
A: On a personal level I would like the future to allow me opportunities to connect people to the essence of the book. As I believe the primary audience are aspiring leaders, I could imagine being engaged with them (high school, undergraduate and graduate students), sharing these ideas and helping them think through their future. There could be opportunities to speak to organizations that are interested in hearing the concepts of the book and how those working there could relate, envelop, and expand this in their work.
Seawall in large part is led by our son Thibault. He believes, as I’ve shared, that real estate is best seen as a way to build and unite communities. The projects that Seawall has led have come from the ideas of others and we’ve utilized the larger community to play a role in our implementation.
Q: From reading the book, it is very inspiration and can impact everyone in different ways no matter the age. For someone who is in high school or college, maybe wanting to start their own business or help others through leadership, what advice or resources would you give them?
A: I would share with those aspiring to be leaders that leadership is about seeing what’s possible. It’s about empowering those working with you to take ownership. It’s recognizing that being a leader does not mean having to know everything and being open to engage stakeholders as resources. Leaders should capitalize on their strengths and the strengths of those working with you. Leaders know how to be humble and acknowledge and celebrate the outcomes of others both internal and external. Leaders know the purpose of their work and bring people onboard who believe and act on that purpose.
There are an arsenal of books, articles, podcasts and videos that highlight leadership as articulated above.
Q: From getting to know you more Donald, you are involved in a lot, especially in the Maryland community. How did you find that passion? What made you start getting involved?
A: First, I had in my dad a real role model. As I shared, I witnessed growing up his engagement in the larger community.
It became clear as we began our Howard County developments that it was important for me to define our purpose as more then developing real estate. I wanted it to be playing a role in the larger community. We weren’t just developers but stakeholders in Howard County’s success. As time went on it became clear to me that Howard County was one of twenty twenty-four subdivisions in Maryland and the success of the State of Maryland would be how those all the counties saw themselves as making up the whole. The leadership programs that I partook in where the catalyst to see what role I could take in the success of the county and state.
Q: How would you describe leadership in your own words? And how would you describe yourself as a leader today?
A: Much of how I would describe leadership is in #6 above.
Now as a leader I see myself as empowering others. I believe strongly that the future is in the hands of my children’s generation and the generations that are following them. I am hopeful that my role can be as a facilitator for them as they take responsibility for the community and world beyond themselves. A recent example of this was to engage MBA students at Loyola to be engaged with the Baltimore City Public Schools’ Career and Technical Education (CTE) program. A team from the university worked throughout the semester with this department to develop strategies for making CTE a viable learning platform. It enabled the MBA students to take what they are learning in the classroom and apply it to real life and to take what they learned in this effort back to the classroom.
Q: You, Donald, writing your first book, talking about your family, challenges you been through and everything leading up to basically the present, what emotions did you have while writing the book? How did it feel beginning writing your book and finishing it?
A: The image that best describes the emotions in writing this would be pictures. We have dozens of books at our home of photographs of our children, grandchildren and our travels. Each picture, as the saying goes, is worth a thousand words. So was the writing of this book. It is a book of images which are detailed in words for these 45 plus years. I can read each section and see the setting, the people and circumstances that the words detail. From recounting the days, I thought I was going to be a teacher, because I didn’t think I was cut out for the world of business, to the present are indelible etched in my head. As I wrote each section I would pause and take in those moments of time. This writing was never to be a textbook but memoir of sorts that could resonate with the reader in ways it resonated for me.
