Any chief who steps into the position of CEO at a longtime firm competes with the legacy of their predecessors. Solely a few of us are fortunate sufficient to have had a mentor come earlier than them, one who was as vested of their successor’s success as they have been in their very own. Jerry Lee, now a retired architect and govt director of our MG2 Basis, was my CEO predecessor at MG2 and my mentor.
Jerry has at all times understood development as one thing far deeper than monetary success. From the earliest days of his profession, he realized that resilience and goal come from how we present up for others. “A part of being beneficiant,” he as soon as mentioned in a graduation speech at Washington State College, “is mainly being useful.”
Helpfulness—it’s so fundamental, however so profoundly vital. He realized the worth of serving to from his mother and father. “My mother and pop had a grocery retailer in Seattle, and it was in a tough space—all the companies round their retailer had been tagged or had their home windows damaged, besides ours,” he recalled to me lately. “And there was an excellent cause for that. When somebody got here in hungry, my dad at all times gave them one thing to eat. That was part of my upbringing, to be a part of a neighborhood, not only a enterprise in a neighborhood.”
This grounding in humility and helpfulness informs each alternative he makes, whether or not main MG2 or giving again to the neighborhood. “Our mindset was by no means concerning the backside line,” he says. For Jerry, success is measured by connection, impression, and the relationships we construct alongside the way in which. He sees generosity not as an obligation, however as a supply of mutual development: “Once you give, you get again extra in return.”
CREATE MOMENTUM BY HELPING
Jerry’s propensity to attach with folks is not only pure—it’s catalytic. Whether or not mentoring younger architects, elevating funds for most cancers analysis, or spearheading neighborhood initiatives, he creates momentum just by displaying up and welcoming others to do the identical.
On one long-discussed mission in Seattle’s Chinatown/Worldwide District, he demonstrated this intuition in motion: “A gaggle approached us and requested if MG2 may assist with the Chinatown Gate. That they had been engaged on it for 50 years. Fifty years! Properly, I mentioned, ‘why don’t we simply do it?’” He helped, elevating funding from scratch, contributing professional bono work, and bringing a decades-long imaginative and prescient to life. This drive is rooted within the perception that management requires generosity, persistence, and dedication. Jerry’s philosophy extends past enterprise: It guides how he engages with the broader neighborhood. From the annual Rotisserie Rooster Supply, our charitable drive that serves a whole bunch of chickens and fixings to folks in want over the vacations, to that now historic Chinatown Gate, his initiative exhibits how small, deliberate acts can multiply into lasting impression.
THE FOUNDATION OF GROWTH
The impetus behind his dedication is deeply private. Jerry has seen firsthand how loss and hardship form character. He can be the primary to inform you that to start with, he was a hard-driving CEO, which was mirrored within the agency’s work tradition. “I used to be very targeted. It was worrying.” However that modified after his late spouse was identified with most cancers. “I used to be capable of put myself in different folks’s sneakers. That had loads to do with it. I used to be much more understanding after she handed away,” he says.
The work was by no means about recognition or accolades—it was about creating connection, fostering resilience, and leaving communities stronger than he discovered them. Each determination, each mission, each second of engagement is an opportunity to construct one thing larger than himself. In his personal phrases, the follow of generosity, dedication, and braveness isn’t elective—it’s the muse of development, each in enterprise and in life.
Taken collectively, Jerry’s story underscores a constant throughline: Management, at its greatest, is relational moderately than transactional. From classes realized behind a grocery counter to constructing a world structure agency and sustaining a long time of civic engagement, his impression has come not from scale alone, however from intention—listening fastidiously, investing in folks, and performing decisively when one thing significant wanted to be accomplished. Whether or not rising MG2 by empowering others or strengthening communities by quiet generosity, Jerry demonstrates that enduring success is constructed one connection at a time, guided by humility, belief, and a perception that what we give—our time, consideration, and care—finally shapes the legacy we go away behind.
Mitch Smith AIA, LEED AP is the CEO and chairman of MG2, an affiliate of Colliers Engineering & Design.
