[ad_1]
Washington DC is run by the federal government and tourism, but Jeff Jamawat, MCP ’19, SM ’19, thinks that’s not enough anymore. “We want people to know DC as a tech hub,” says Jamawat, vice president of economic development and innovation at the Golden Triangle Business District. The nonprofit is launching an innovation district centered along Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House and George Washington University. “This will diversify the city’s workforce with technical talent and help DC stay competitive,” he says.
Born in Los Angeles, Jamawat grew up in Bangkok, Thailand. “Some kids loved sports or music. For me it has always been about buildings,” she says. “The space between them and how they touched the sky.”
After college, Jamawat moved to DC for a fellowship with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s smart growth program. She later got a job at the Mayors Institute of Urban Design at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “It has been a privilege to work with mayors from inland Alaska to the Florida coast on projects ranging from relocating a train station to transforming a waterfront,” says Jamawat.
After four years in the job, Jamawat decided he needed skills that could only be found at MIT. “I understood how the results of many urban design projects are linked to real estate development,” he says. “But in most schools, the real estate program is taught in business or public policy school. I wanted a program where the real estate is part of the built environment and the design DNA and physical planning are involved.” While on his way to a dual master’s degree in real estate development and urban planning, he wrote a thesis investigating the hypothetical adaptive reuse scenario for Amazon’s corporate headquarters in downtown Seattle.
Amazon continues to play a role in Jamawat’s current business; The company’s second US campus is located just across the river from DC, providing friendly competition for the talent the innovation district wants to attract.
“We frame this project as the third pillar of the DC economy,” he says. “All the elements are here to create another Kendall Square: the talent pool, public transport access, partnerships with the city, and a committed university partner. The physical infrastructure already exists; we just need to adapt them for technology related uses. We are only at the beginning of this process and I am just a small piece of a much larger puzzle. This job has pretty much everything I hoped to find after MIT.”
[ad_2]
Source link