When Britnie was 12 years old, she had a dream that changed her life forever. In this vision, she saw herself as a missionary in Africa.

After this experience, Britnie’s mind was set on doing mission work. To get the necessary training to be as successful and effective in the field as possible, she went to leadership and survival school to learn the skills for persisting in extreme conditions. Her goal was to end sex trafficking. Morningstar Ministries, in Fort Mill, SC is where she found her next step.

During the summer of 2007, Britnie set out on a mission trip to Costa Rica with her survival team called “Special Forces”. It was there she met a little girl who was handicapped due to being sexually abused by her father. She was heartbroken to learn that such abuse was not only common but socially acceptable in that region. It was then that she went back to her tent and dedicated her life to finding ways to change that standard, forever.

During one of her leadership classes, she heard a man speak about how you can cash flow your home if the money you make from renting out rooms is more than your mortgage payment. She was immediately inspired by the idea and saw it as a way to fund her mission trips without asking others for money. So, she bought her first house when she was 18…during the 2007 recession. She was working at Cheesecake Factory at the time and spent every free moment in the kitchen reading any real estate and investment books she could get her hands on. After moving to Nashville in 2009, she worked without pay for 9 months for a few real estate investors, just to learn the business, sometimes while living out of her car. Soon after, she started renovating houses on her own. Wearing multiple hats as a real estate agent, rehabber, and rental portfolio manager her real estate career took off, quickly growing into a multi-million dollar business.

In 2009, Britnie founded Aerial Development Group, a Nashville, TN-based residential and commercial development company that revitalizes urban neighborhoods through renovation and infill. Employing a social enterprise business model, Aerial Development Group works to elevate people and places. Through its work Aerial is focused on mindfully revitalizing the urban core and also donates a percentage of its profits to support non-profit organizations in its local community and sponsors an orphan in Kenya for every home that is sold in the name of the home buyer.

Aerial Development Group is resetting the standard for how development takes place and works to prove the business case for addressing social needs through its projects. They collaborate with neighbors and community leaders to make their Nashville neighborhoods healthier, safer, and stronger as well as bring to life projects that allow people to connect with their best self and nature. They improve and revitalize those neighborhoods with innovative projects such as the First Health and Wellness Community in Nashville and Artist Housing, they incorporate tree planting programs, trash cleanups, sustainable features, new sidewalks, and connections to parks and greenways to give residents and the surrounding community access to a healthier life.

Britnie learned that business can be used as a transformative vehicle to change lives through the built environment. That insight led her to change the business model from simply building houses to strategically transforming neighborhoods into places people want to live in and empowering the residents already living there. Today, Aerial Development Group, a for-profit socially conscious company, is honing this model in urban areas of Nashville so they can apply it in other countries in the future to bring about social change.

Britnie believes in a business model of Excellence and Impact. Her main focus at Aerial is the excellence of the product and services offered to Aerial’s buyers, and the company culture that must exist to deliver them. Her companies then leverage the resulting reputation and resources to make a positive impact locally and globally as both a community of people and as a physical place. If it isn’t excellent, she won’t offer it. And if she isn’t making an impact, she won’t be doing it!