Michael Clinton has always dreamed big. "My mother told me I could do anything, so I had a confidence that was a little inexplicable," says Clinton, now acquisitions manager and partner at Midos Development Group in Los Angeles. That self-assurance led him to apply to Duke, even though his mother earned just $28,000 a year. "My mom was pretty adamant about education first," he recalls, "and never blinked twice about how we were going to pay for it."
At Duke, Clinton was inspired by his fraternity brothers in Kappa Alpha Psi, almost all of whom went on to graduate school. He applied to Owen in 2005 after working as an analyst in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. While at Owen, he studied abroad at ESSEC School of Business in Paris. "As a kid from Baltimore, living in Paris for four months was extraordinary," he says.
Clinton worked in investment banking in Philadelphia before moving to Marina del Rey, California, with his wife, Tiffany, an L.A. native. "She played a huge role in opening my eyes to what was possible," says Clinton, who started his own real estate investment company in 2008.
We fight the good fight because until you see people like you do things, it's very hard for children to see that they can do them also.
Over time, Clinton acquired properties, including an event venue in Palm Springs and an apartment building outside Minneapolis. Two recent additions, co-owned with friends, are The Guest House in Natchez, Mississippi, an antebellum mansion built by enslaved people that is now a 16-room bed and breakfast, and The Redline Venice, a former apartment building on Venice Beach now converted into a hotel. The second name refers to a discriminatory housing practice called "redlining" that restricted where Black people could buy homes.
In hopes of educating visitors about the vital role Black people played in developing the coastal California town, Clinton and his business partners integrated history into the design of The Redline Venice. He hopes to expand this concept into other cities where redlining occurred. Meanwhile, he is developing Weiss Lake Lodge, a hotel in Centre, Alabama, and has a mixed-use project in the works in Inglewood, California.
"I have dealt with racism head-on, and still do," Clinton says. "Being a minority developer in this country is difficult for so many reasons. We fight the good fight because until you see people like you do things, it's very hard for children to see that they can do them also." He wants his own son and daughter to dream big, like he did. "We have to become part of that changing narrative."
-Elizabeth Cook Jenkins, BS'99
