Sometime in the middle of the night of March 26, Mark Anthony Thomas awoke to a text from a friend in South Africa.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, where Thomas BBA ’01 had lived for the past 15 months, had been hit by a freighter and collapsed. One of the most traveled highways on the Eastern seaboard was gone. Traffic in and out of the Port of Baltimore was blocked. The number killed was unclear.
Thomas didn’t go back to sleep.
The Dekalb County native moved to Baltimore to become CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, a consortium of the region’s private sector leaders focused on economic development. From a business standpoint, few, if any, leaders were better positioned to address the disaster.
He wasted no time.
As the sun rose, Thomas reached out to the committee’s 400 members. Their first step was to take care of affected families. Then the focus turned to determining the near- and long-term impact of the tragedy.
“It was a deeply troubling moment, with our port’s supply chain completely disrupted and thousands of jobs directly impacted real time,” Thomas says. “Within a few days we pulled together an alliance of businesses and philanthropic organizations all aligned with supporting both immediate needs and long-term recovery efforts.”
Responding to the Key Bridge accident, which killed six, would challenge any leader regardless of their qualifications. Still, Thomas is up to the challenge.
There are moments where everything you’ve learned in your career prepares you for the task at hand.” — Mark Anthony Thomas, CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee
His journey began at the University of Georgia where he dreamed of becoming a newspaper writer. He started quickly, joining the staff of The Red & Black shortly after arriving on campus. He wrote for the paper all four years of school, rising to editor-in-chief his senior year—the first Black student to hold the position.
But the paper wasn’t Thomas’ only interest. He adopted a fascination with many forms of communication. He soon focused on e-commerce, which was in its formative stages at the turn of the 21st century, and eventually earned a marketing degree from the Terry College of Business.
“That was the early version of tech,” Thomas recalls. “My first job after graduation was on the corporate communications team at Georgia Pacific. As I was shaping the message, I had to understand it, and that crystallized my knowledge on the role of private sector leadership on both urban and rural issues.”
It also marked Thomas’ first steps down the path that now defines his career.
At Georgia Pacific in Atlanta, Thomas developed an interest in the intersection of business and public policy, earning graduate degrees from both Columbia and MIT before expanding economic leadership roles in Los Angeles, New York City, Pittsburgh, and eventually settling in Baltimore in December 2022.
Of course, the Key Bridge disaster isn’t something even the most forward-thinking leader could anticipate. Still, the port fully reopened in June, and transportation and other development plans are already underway. For his part, Thomas is optimistic.
“There are moments where everything you’ve learned in your career prepares you for the task at hand,” he says. “We’re aligning partners in ways that will ensure Baltimore recovers and change the course of things here.”
