Cecil Phillips

Chairman & CEO at Place Properties

Speaker

Cecil was born and raised in Missouri, and has lived in Atlanta since 1971. He received his B.A. with honors in Diplomatic History from the University of Missouri in 1968 and his J.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1971.

From 1971-1979, Cecil was an associate and then a partner in the-Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird. From 1979-1983, he was Special Assistant and Executive Assistant to the Governor of Georgia. While serving the Governor, Cecil initiated and executed the Governor's visit to China, which included a private meeting with Deng Xiaoping, the then-ruler of China. This was the first visit by a sitting Governor to meet with Deng.

Cecil has financed, developed and overseen the development of more than 43,000 bedrooms of on-campus and off-campus housing at 30 different campuses, including a hotel conversion to student housing in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Cecil also developed 12 off-base military housing communities in seven states.

In 2019, Cecil created an affiliate of Place Properties. The affiliate's mission is to build housing that people can actually afford, using volumetric modular construction. The affiliate owns two modular facilities, one in south Georgia, the other under construction in Westminster, South Carolina. The plant in south Georgia has sold hundreds of single-family homes, principally into the Florida market.

The affiliate was recently chosen to build the "showcase house" in Asheville, North Carolina to demonstrate the lower cost and much faster delivery time of modular construction as Asheville rebuilds the more than 1,500 homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Helene.

Cecil has served on the boards of directors of publicly held financial institutions, including serving as Chair of a publicly held federally-chartered bank holding company. Cecil served as Chair of the Atlanta Housing Authority for 15 years. During his tenure, the Authority created what became known as the "Atlanta Plan". Among other innovations, the Atlanta Plan created a unique, and first-of-its-kind financing structure that incorporates private equity into the capital stack.

Cecil has also served as a member of the Board of Directors of Research Atlanta, Inc., the Georgia Lottery Corporation, Chair of the Board of Visitors at Emory University, Chair of the Georgia Policy Council on Children and Families, and Chair of the Dean's Council of the Emory University School of Public Health. Cecil is former Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Howard School, and a member and former Chair of the Atlanta Regional Board of Teach For America. Cecil has been a member of The Council on Foreign Relations since 1997.

Cecil and his wife Carol have three grown daughters and seven grandchildren.