Exit Interview: Jamie McDonald is stepping down from UpSurge Baltimore’s top role

The final few months of 2023 will be Jamie McDonald’s last in her role as UpSurge Baltimore’s CEO.

In a newsletter published Tuesday morning, McDonald said she will be stepping down from her role nearly two years after helping to launch the organization alongside Baltimore institutional, civic and investment leaders in spring 2021.

Before becoming UpSurge’s CEO, McDonald was an investment banker who spent 17 years covering private equity and VC firms. She went on to start and exit two companies, including Baltimore-based SaaS company GiveCorps.

During a recent phone interview, she explained that stepping down would allow her to focus more on her marriage in light of her husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, which coincided with the formation of UpSurge. She said that her departure from the CEO role does not involve leaving Baltimore; rather, she intends to continue serving UpSurge and local founders in her new role as entrepreneur-in-residence. She also expressed her confidence in UpSurge’s team; she specifically mentioned chief ecosystem and relationship officer Kory Bailey and COO Maddie Stokes, a 2023 RealLIST Connector, as ongoing leaders in the organization in the aforementioned newsletter.

As she reflected on her decision, she underscored the importance of her passion for Baltimore and its tech community.

“So I’m very clear that this is a decision that I’ve had very mixed emotions about,” McDonald said. “On the one hand, I’m so passionate about Baltimore and I’m passionate about our tech community — both in terms of just the core of what they represent for Baltimore, but also, personally, I have deep relationships with people across our ecosystem, and the opportunity to work side-by-side with them on building the future of Baltimore has just been such a privilege. But I have also been married for almost 35 years. And when Tom was diagnosed, it was the same year we started UpSurge. So I started in the beginning of the year and he was diagnosed in the fall of 2021. And I was on this learning journey in both realms, right?”

With the hope of maintaining UpSurge’s mission to make Baltimore the nation’s first equitech city, emphasizing inclusivity over specific industry areas, the UpSurge board has formed a transition committee to select a new CEO. This group is accepting applications for the role through Sept. 29.

Find the job description here

McDonald also highlighted the continuity and strength of the rest of UpSurge’s team.

“I think that one of the most important things that that a leader can do when they’re leaving a CEO role is to recognize, one, that we have an amazing team that’s going to carry all of the key work forward that we’ve been working on,” she said. “And there is nothing that I’ve done in a vacuum in my time at UpSurge. We’ve had a strong group of both leadership team staff and our supporting staff in place, and they’re all staying in place. So I think that we have tremendous continuity in terms of the major initiatives that we’re working on. I also feel like a new leader may lean into certain lanes of our work that they feel are more important because they’re going to bring their expertise [and]their perspectives to it. And that’s what you’d expect, and I think that that’s a real opportunity for Baltimore: to have had the view of our first leadership group – me and our board and our team — and then, potentially, the infusion of fresh perspectives from a potential new leader.”

Asked about the things she was proud of from her UpSurge Baltimore, she made a clarification: “So let’s say it as a ‘we,’ not a ‘me.’” Here are some of the accomplishments she highlighted, in her own words:

• “So we’ve supported, in some way, more than 300 founders in our ecosystem. We have not just founders, but founders and the investors in our ecosystem. We have connected founders, and actually, some of our investors who are raising funds to millions of dollars in capital to fuel their growth.”
• “Separate from the federal tech hubs work that [the Greater Baltimore Committee] led, we have led a couple of efforts where collaborations of local tech folks have gone after federal funding. That, I think, in and of itself, is something that wasn’t really happening. It wasn’t happening in collaborations. I think individual people were seeking individual funding. So we’re really proud of that.”
• “Obviously, the SVB [Silicon Valley Bank] response and the way the community mobilized around a really pivotal moment for our startup community.”
• “I think having the Baltimore tech community data, that really anchors us in facts about the stage of our ecosystem, about the opportunities, things like the $11 billion opportunity report — helping people realize that while we have a ton of work to do, we are building on a really strong platform.”
• “I think Baltimoreans can be kind of down on themselves, and I think part of what we’ve been able to demonstrate with our data, and also just with our strong belief, is that we have a lot here to celebrate and amplify already. Yes, we have a lot of work to do. Yes, we have a long way to go to be the tech ecosystem we want to be, but we are so much further ahead in this race than I think a lot of folks gave us credit for.”
• “I’ve been so lucky to work side by side, particularly with Kory and Maddie but [also] with Chris [Bunner], who’s an unbelievable data analyst; with Naomi [Winston], who’s incredible [with] events. … My board is incredible. Our investors and our supporters from across sectors in the city, it’s just been such a privilege to work with all of them.