Jarrod Whitaker, the senior vice president of residential operations for RXR Realty and “the real estate godfather of Harlem” oversees ground-up construction projects and leases of luxury residential projects worth billions of dollars.
Founder and CEO of Direct Managing Solutions LLC, Whitaker has worked in the real estate industry for the past 16 years. The real estate mogul started his career through an “untraditional path” and is now looking to give back to marginalized communities in the Bronx.
Whitaker started his career in the music industry as a recording hip-hop artist for Universal Records in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Once he started a family and music file sharing became present in the mid-2000s, however, Whitaker said he had to choose between “going in and out of recording studios and sharing couches or having health insurance.”
In 2006, Whitaker began an internship at a large real estate private equity and investment firm in Manhattan where he worked as an entry-level mail clerk for $10 an hour. Whitaker sought mentorship and one partner at the firm offered him an after-work internship, where he traveled to real estate properties owned in the Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. He audited leases, met with tenant associations, and recorded issues and requests from those properties.
Whitaker was promoted to assistant project manager and obtained his real estate salesperson’s license. By 2008, he executed $25 million in sales with his real estate license and became the project manager for one of the largest privately funded cooperative conversions in New York state.
Now, Whitaker seeks to give back to his community through mentorship and financial literacy resources.
“The best way for people to be able to learn and grow and have an opportunity is to watch someone else do it,” Whitaker said. “So if there’s someone that came before them that actually carved out a pathway, and they were able to see how they did that, being able to demonstrate that to someone else, to see that it’s achievable and have a blueprint and a roadmap is highly accretive.”
Black and Brown neighborhoods in the Bronx have been historically barred from accruing generational wealth through home ownership. Redlining is a practice that began in the 1930s in which lenders denied mortgages to people of color in urban areas. While the 1968 Fair Housing Act prohibited the practice of redlining, economic disparities between white and Black Americans have persisted.
In the Bronx, Whitaker has worked to bring in neighborhood counseling and neighborhood housing services of New York to help hundreds of people go through credit counseling courses, improve their credit scores, and tap into down payments.
The Bronx has also been a site of a development boom in recent years. The boogie down has welcomed thousands of new units, the most of any borough, according to a report from the NYC Department of City Planning. Whitaker said the development is making the Bronx “a destination, not somewhere that people come and leave.”
Whitaker participated in former President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper program and worked with the Harlem chapter of the Boys and Girls Club. He also works with the Columbia University Justice Ambassador program to teach financial literacy, real estate, and stock investing to the incarcerated.
“It’s deeply personal to me to give back because I’m the beneficiary of that, right? If that one African American partner at the firm I started interning in 2006 didn’t give me an opportunity I would not be sitting here today,” Whittaker said.
The same partner who Whitaker credits with his success in real estate also helped him apply to Columbia University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and urban studies. Whitaker went on to complete a master’s in real estate development from New York University and a management certification program from Harvard University School of Business.
“Getting that mentorship opportunity was critical, in my personal success, and being able to leverage education and that mentorship is really what allowed me to be able to utilize my God-given talents and learn, grow, and excel,” Whitaker said. “So it’s deeply personal giving back because I know absent that opportunity being given to me, I wouldn’t be sitting where I’m at today.”
In October 2023, Whitaker was recognized with a proclamation from several city officials, including Mayor Eric Adams and Sen. Chuck Schumer, for his work with the Boys and Girls Club and the Financial Literacy Program.
“None of us are limited to our circumstance,” Whitaker said. “So (regardless) where we come from, what our background is and what our past is, we all have an opportunity today to seek out resources, mentorship [and] educational opportunities. I consider myself a lifelong learner. So for the young Jarrod who might be in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem or beyond New York City, I would hope that I could reach them with a message of inspiration.”
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