Simon Thomas, 39

CEO, DOBI Real Estate, Birmingham Employees: 130 • Revenue: $13M • College: Oakland University

Two decades ago, Simon Thomas went into Detroit to sell foreclosed homes for multiple banks. From there, he found his professional calling.

“I wanted to start making money immediately, so I got into real estate for the money and once I got into it I realized, man, this is a great profession, and I started taking it seriously,” Thomas says. “I stayed in it, and grew it to where we are today.”

By his third year selling homes and properties for various real estate companies, he hit $20 million in annual home sales. In 2018, he founded his own company, DOBI Real Estate in Birmingham’s Rail District, to put his own spin on a real estate brokerage.

“Our success is looking at agents as clients, not as a buyer or a seller,” Thomas says. “Our space, our training, our culture, and our staff is all geared around them. Our decision-making is supporting the real estate agent to be the most successful they can be. They have our unbelievable marketing team, where turnaround time is really fast — 24 to 48 hours. That’s why, in the last four to five years, we’ve grown to 110 agents.”

Instead of a traditional office building, DOBI operates in a compact, 4,000-squarefoot space featuring the “pit,” where 20 or more agents can drop in and plug in laptops, a café where a second-year agent can network with a 20-year agent, a few traditional offices that are used as needed, and an outdoor patio.

“It’s a hospitality feeling versus just coming into an office. We’re making sure (agents) are always taken care of in a collaborative atmosphere that’s addictive,” says Thomas, whose family is in the hospitality business. “We actually have menus and food. We celebrate closings rather than just having the client come in, sit down, and sign papers,” he says.

Thomas is bullish on the local real estate market. He says high interest rates aren’t discouraging buyers whose mindset is to refinance when rates go down. “Houses are still selling very fast, but there aren’t that many for sale,” he says.

As the business grows, Thomas is actively seeking new sites for expansion. “The goal is to get five offices in five cities in the next five years with 1,000 agents,” he says.

Norm Sinclair

Emily Thompson, 36

While most people recognize that a public university is a source of high-level education, Emily Thompson sees more. She sees an “anchor institution” — the sort of entity everyone can be confident will be around in 20, 30, or 50 years. She also sees a major employer, a generator of community benefits, and a source of knowledge.

That makes Wayne State University in Detroit an ideal organization to impact the growth of the local economy, which is why Thompson finds it so natural to embrace her role as WSU’s director of economic and community development.

“We’re not a business that might, in 10 years, get up and move,” Thompson says. “We’re far too ingrained in our footprint and physical location.”

Thompson joined Wayne State in 2015, after taking on multiple roles in the office of then-U.S. Rep. John Dingell. At the same time, she earned a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Michigan. From there, she worked for the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, where she learned how to work with multiple communities, and how to approach civic engagement and economic development differently.

“It was that nonprofit work that I would credit for my entrepreneurial spirit, which attracted me to Wayne,” Thompson says. “I was focused on the questions: How do you do what you want to do? And how do you fund what you want to do?”

One of her leading initiatives at Wayne State has been Transit Pass, a partnership with the university’s Parking and Transportation Division to provide free DART and MoGo passes to enrolled students and employees.

Thompson also led the 2022 development of the school’s Economic Impact Strategy, which contains specific goals and metrics for Wayne State to pursue with respect to economic impact on the region.

“In creating it, I often got the question, What does my work have to do with economic impact?” Thompson says. “Personally, I would love to get to the point where everybody at Wayne understands how their role connects to the impact of the university, they’re able to communicate it, and they’re excited about it.”

Dan Calabrese

Director of Economic and Community Development, Wayne State University, Detroit

Employees: 7,700 • Revenue: $941M

College: University of Michigan

Abby Ward began her career recording history, but now she’s helping make it at Flagstar Bank, which has its regional headquarters in Troy.

“I came to Flagstar after I started in accounting,” Ward says. “I wanted to become more involved in the forward-thinking aspect of business as opposed to accounting, where you’re often looking back on what happened in history and trying to record those events.”

Ward is the divisional director of planning and analytics at Flagstar Bank, a position she’s held for more than four years. Her analysis helped Flagstar through its recent merger with New York Community Bank; the new entity is the 24th largest bank in the country. “Flagstar previously had 150 branches, but now that we’ve combined with NYCB, I support 400 branches,” she says.

Beyond the business of banking, Ward serves as a mentor for Flagstar’s intern program, and she’s a member of the bank’s Women’s Employee Resource Group Executive Committee. Right now, the committee is helping to implement the integration of NYCB’s branches.

“I think it’s important to make sure people feel heard and understood. These groups give people that opportunity,” Ward says. “Sometimes you may not feel comfortable going to your boss with something, but if you’re a part of the Employee Resource Group, you can find a group of people who can relate to the struggles or adversity you’re facing.”

Ward says she’s grateful for the support she’s received from Flagstar. Six weeks after having her second child, she returned to work during the COVID-19 pandemic to help with the Paycheck Protection Program. “I think that’s when I became really proud to work at Flagstar, after seeing how they showed up for the community and supported me having a young child,” she says.

She volunteered to distribute money to applicants, one of which happened to be an organization she had volunteered with in high school. “I wrote a note to the pastor about how wonderful it felt to be able to get them that money, and play a role in making sure they could continue through the pandemic,” says Ward, who also volunteers at the Grosse Pointe Public Library.

By donating her time to help the community, Ward says she’s serving as a role model for her children. “I’m proud to say they see their mom is really active in their community.”

Calli Newberry