“An Agile, Inspirational Leader”

Jackie Hizzey, Senior VP and CFO of MainStreet Property Group LLC, is a highly influential leader with a strong sense of empathy. She appreciates multiple perspectives, demonstrating compassion and sensitivity, and showing genuine care for other people’s challenges. She has built strong relationships among people at all levels within the organization and outside the organization with lenders, investment partners, consultants, subcontractors, etc., on whom their business relies.

Jackie took up the responsibility for leading the organization’s financial strategy, including project capitalization, treasury management, tax planning, business operations, risk management, accounting and reporting, and investor relations. “I have been with the MainStreet organization since its inception – Employee #1. I had minimal commercial real estate experience when I joined the organization over 10 years ago, but I had the accounting and finance fundamentals and understood how to set up systems and processes. I was willing to roll up my sleeves to get whatever needed to get done when it needed to get done,” she says. “One of my strengths is agility. I thrive in an environment where I am presented with new projects and challenges and can pivot as needed to address whatever is at the forefront. I use this strength to move the organization forward as our fast-paced business is always evolving with new opportunities and relationships presenting themselves daily.”

When Jackie started in the commercial real estate and construction industries nearly 20 years ago, the fields were male-dominated. “To this day, I am still often the only female at the table or only one of a handful of women at an industry event. However, rather than focusing on the gender imbalance, I focused on the culture we created within our organization where we produce “Best in Class” work across all levels and we do what we say we are going to do,” she says. “This motto has resulted in our organization creating one amazing project after another and creating long-lasting relationships and vibrant communities.”

Empowering women in business leadership is something Jackie is deeply passionate about across any industry, and she is proud to be part of the MainStreet organization, where 4 out of the 6 Executive Team members are women. “This sets an amazing example for the other women entrepreneurs within our organization,” she says. Armed with these unique ideologies, Jackie has been leading the company to new heights.

MainStreet was started in 2010 with the vision of developing, constructing, and operating amazing places to delight the customer. When the company was founded, much of the area’s commercial development was focused on the downtown city core business districts. “Our organization saw an opportunity in the suburban cities of Seattle where housing was lacking next to some of the area’s major Eastside employers and major transportation arterials,” explains Jackie. “Knowing that people want to live near where they work, we sought out properties in these suburban markets and developed and constructed apartment and mixed-use buildings creating communities and, in some cases, even carrying out a city’s vision of revitalizing a downtown core.”

According to Jackie, MainStreet is unique as it is vertically integrated. They take projects from unentitled raw land, work with a talented team of architects, engineers, other consultants, and cities to develop the vision, plan, and design for what they will build and what makes sense to build there. “We then construct the project with our construction arm GenCap Construction Corp. and ultimately market, lease-up and manage the building with our property management company, Insite Property Solutions.” She adds, “We really have the end-to-end experience of developing, building and then operating for the long-term. Everything that we’re involved in lets us get close to our customers, or our commercial tenants.” This provides a feedback loop that MainStreet can incorporate back into the development, design, and construction processes in real-time. “We’ve worked hard to fulfill our purpose of “Turning Spaces into Places” where people and businesses thrive. Our projects are built to last and endure the tests of time. Our team does this by sweating the details – each and every day,” adds Jackie. IEWL