Jodie W. McLean
Community Through Design
Jodie plays to win, whether it’s a board game with her kids or the Thanksgiving basketball game. She was a competitive tennis player growing up, earning every trophy thanks to practice and grit. But she was no stranger to failure. Tennis involves a lot of losing—points, games, sets and matches.
She gets that fighting spirit from her grandmothers. One, a Norwegian immigrant, found herself widowed with two little kids in the early 1940s. She never remarried. She put herself through school and became a dental hygienist to support her family. She figured out how to get her kids into top schools through scholarships. Her other grandmother found herself with a polio-stricken and paralyzed husband in the early 1940s. She had already lost her job during the Depression and her family’s farm in Illinois was laid waste by the dust bowl. She had to take over and care for two children while her husband recovered.
These grandmothers were determined, strong, smart women. There was no room for whining, but plenty of space for wit. “They had slayed dragons,” she says. It’s their story Jodie was born into.
Known as Jo to her two sisters, she was the youngest of the pack. Jodie was never one to be left behind. She was eager to be a little faster than her sisters, pushing to ski down the mountain faster or challenging them to a harder slope.
Jodie gets her love for design from her dad. Although a banker by day, his true passion was architecture. He designed the house in Chicagoland where she grew up. She remembers pouring over the original blueprints and the visits with architects and builders. She loved the process of it all, from design to construction to the final result.
She overheard the architects talking about getting the “feel” of a space right. Their house was so much more than a place to live. It was an environment that promoted family interaction. Every piece mattered: the height of the ceiling, the cues of the materials, the copper fireplace centering the living room, how the kitchen opened into the dining and the living room. The house was in the shape of a Y and, ahead of its time, had few walls. The feeling was communal, the perfect home.
She went to boarding school at Hotchkiss and then to the Honors College at the University of South Carolina. She loved math, so she studied finance. She originally wanted to be a sports agent and interned at Universal Sports in Chicago. She thought the industry was too male dominated for her liking. Instead, she went into the next-most male dominated world of commercial real estate.
She met Joe Edens through an independent study in college. When she graduated in 1990, he asked her to stay as a financial analyst at his relatively small South Carolina-based commercial real estate company.
It was some of the company’s darkest days. Hurricane Hugo had just torn through South Carolina, turning most of its portfolio literally inside out, with roofs blown off. She told Joe thanks but no thanks, she was headed back to Chicago, but eventually agreed to stay two years max.
Over 30 years later, Jodie jokes that her career could fit on a postage stamp. All it needs to say is EDENS. But it’s been quite a journey. She learned everything she could from Joe. She’d show up to the office as early as him, meet him at the coffeemaker and ask how she could help.
She was given incredible opportunities, and because of the story she was written into, she’s said yes to every one. She’s done stints in all divisions of the company. She became EDENS Chief Investment Officer in 1997, then President in 2002 and finally CEO in 2015. The company was worth $100M when she started in 1990. Today it’s worth $6.5B with real estate developments across the country.
But in 2006, she hit an inflection point. She was a single mom with a young son and a hard-charging career. She’d rush home to be with her son, cook dinner, do homework and read together. After he was in bed, she relished “dial-up” internet and the ability to order online and have products quickly delivered. At the same time, she realized her schedule and lifestyle left her isolated and craving a sense of community—an “a-ha moment” that EDENS’ places had to be more than shopping centers; they had to be places that truly enrich community through human engagement.
She would lead EDENS conversion into a purpose-driven organization that created spaces to bring people together. If you can build a warm environment where people want to be, they will swing by more and more. Soon people begin to recognize others around them, and they feel like they are part of something larger than themselves. That feeling is accomplished through design, through the curation of retail partners, and through events and engagement. Inside Union Market, like her childhood home, there are few walls so that you can scan the room all at once and feel a unity with everyone there.
Through it all, Jodie is at heart a family person. With her husband Pierre, they raised four kids with dinner at the kitchen table five nights a week. She still loves sport. She’s a personal investor in the DC women’s soccer team the Spirit. Prior to converting the rooftop at Union Market to a park, EDENS put a 750-seat stadium for the DC Kastle’s 2019 season.
On weekends you can find Jodie down on the local pickleball court, enjoying a little friendly competition, playing to win. ■
