Leading Uptown Dallas Inc. has brought the organization’s new president and executive director Jamee Jolly full circle.
She will steer the organization and partner with the city on initiatives focused on public safety, transportation, maintenance and marketing. Jolly succeeds former Uptown Dallas executive director Kathy Stewart, who left to run for Dallas City Council, District 10.
The more Jolly and the search committee discussed what they were looking for, the more she believed the position was a good match for her skillset and background. She previously served as the senior executive director of Plano ISD Education Foundation where she brought in 400 new donors in her first year. Jolly also led the Plano Chamber of Commerce as president and CEO and served as executive director of the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work with several different types of nonprofits, associations and foundations,” Jolly said. “Uptown Dallas Inc. is a public improvement district, and it functions for the sole purpose of helping to create community. I love my hometown. This was a great opportunity for me to continue to partner with the business community and work in a space where I feel like we’re really making a big difference.”
Jolly spoke with the Dallas Business Journal about her priorities for her first year:
How will your past career and leadership experience inform you as you step into this role?
Going back to earlier in my career, I worked with The Real Estate Council here in Dallas, and we work with partnering with our development community and understanding their needs and challenges.
A lot of what’s happening here in Uptown is development. It’s redevelopment. It’s understanding when you bring in different types of development into a community how it changes the lay of the land and how it impacts the surrounding area. We want to make sure that when developers and property owners come to Uptown that they’re investing — and we’re working together — as a cohesive neighborhood.
I had some of that experience working at the Real Estate Council. My job allowed me to work closely with the leadership on Klyde Warren Park. I’m very familiar with some of the parks and community assets that we have in this area.
I’ve also worked with different boards of directors, leadership and different types and sizes of organizations. We have a fairly small staff here in Uptown Dallas, but we have a great mission. We have strong leadership from our board of directors and our executive committee. I bring a great deal of experience that will help us move forward and make sure that we are really performing to the level that we need to in order to provide the services property owners expect from the public improvement district.
What are your goals for your first year in this role, and what challenges do you anticipate?
I’m very interested in learning the history. I’m currently meeting with as many people as I can, everything from elected officials to past leadership, current leadership and community partners that we’re working with. That’s my emphasis in these first 90 days to make sure that I have a good wealth of knowledge from a broad group to help me better lead the organization.
Personally, I want to make sure that whenever my chapter here closes that the organization is in much better shape than it was when I came here, and we are truly meeting the needs of the Uptown community and working as a partner with the City of Dallas to keep this area vibrant. I also hope to try every restaurant in Uptown. People know Uptown as a place to come, shop and eat, so I definitely want to get out and make sure I make the rounds.
Then I want to reconnect with some of my old contacts. It’s been a few years since I’ve been in Dallas working. I’ve been up in Plano for the past probably 12 years working. I’m excited to reconnect with the Dallas business community and also those that are helping to lead our city.
What do you plan to focus on first? What will be your priority?
In the past, we’ve surveyed residents and property owners and asked them, ‘What is important in Uptown?’ It’s really the quality of life and making sure that we’re focused on things like walkability, public safety and maintenance in the community, everything from trash pickup to curb striping and crosswalks.
There’s a lot of opportunity to build on what we’ve been doing. The city continues to evolve, and the community continues to evolve. New challenges will come up, and we’ll have to be flexible enough to deal with that and make sure that we’re listening to our property owners and their concerns.
Personally, so far what I see being some of the top priorities include dealing with some of the concerns with noise in Uptown. We are a residential neighborhood. A lot of people call Uptown home, so how do we work with our entertainment providers in the community? We’re cognizant of the fact that our neighbors are not that far away. They live very close. That’s going to be important.
We’re doing some exciting things with Griggs Park, which is within Uptown, and we have the management contract for the park. We have some neat renovations that are going on right now that will allow us to host events and do more with Griggs Park, so it becomes a real gathering place in our community.
You’ll also see some work on just the main thoroughfares through Uptown. There’s some discussion about a two-way conversion happening along Cole and McKinney avenues, so creating a two-way conversion versus right now, those are both one-way streets. That’s going to be something that we work hand in hand with the city on as we go forward. That’s something that’s been in the works for quite some time now.
Then like a lot of nonprofits when COVID hit, we had a strategic plan that we were in the midst of, and we had to table that and really focus on how we best support our community during the pandemic. Now we’re able to circle back, revisit our strategic plan, see what areas we need to continue to work on as we go forward and then from there, decide what priorities we’ll have in the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
