Michelle Freeman has navigated the good and the bad as the CEO of Carl M. Freeman Companies, a family-owned company and one of Delaware’s largest developers of new communities.
Since taking over as its CEO in December 2009 when the nation was struggling with a housing crisis now known as “the Great Recession,” she has steered the firm through good economic periods and horrible economic periods.
“The years 2008-2009 were catastrophic in all phases of our business,” Freeman recounts 15 years later. “We went from selling 100 houses a year in a development to selling zero houses. The company had never sold any of its assets before, but I needed to sell assets. At the end of the day, the business had to be able to move forward so that we could find new opportunities.”
Under Freeman’s leadership, it has done just that.
Today, the company touts a Sussex County office in Ocean View and another in Bethesda, Md. The company has grown to include properties in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, focusing on everything from residential development and management of well-planned, environmentally concerned communities to commercial property developers with portfolios highlighting beach-front, golf course communities and shopping centers. Leaders also focus business interests in sports and entertainment enterprises.
One of the company’s most recent housing projects is the 292-home Tower Hill community in Sussex County, winner of the 2024 Delaware Governor’s Conservation Award.
“I try to inspire our employees by telling then the beauty of building communities is you get to drive through them years later and see people walking their dogs or playing golf,” Freeman said of her own leadership. “I tell them they can look back years from now and say, ‘I was a small part of that.’”
Freeman is perhaps most proud of her philanthropic efforts through the company’s foundations, supporting $25 million in donations to more than 500 nonprofit organizations in the Delmarva region.
“We give where we live,” she said. “One out of six children in Sussex County goes to bed hungry. It’s a story of the haves and the have-nots, so we don’t have to look far for our charitable giving.”
