Please note: Since recording this episode, Tyrone has changed companies from Invenergy to Plus Power.

This is Built, a new podcast series where you’ll meet the people behind some of the biggest transactions and investments in commercial real estate, and hear how they got to where they are today.

I’m your host Brian Maughan, chief marketing officer with Fidelity National Financial.

And we wanted to bring you this show because those of us in this business, we know the buildings...but how many of us know the stories of the people behind those structures?

That’s what we’re gonna bring you every two weeks during this first season.

My first guest is Tyrone Thomas.

Tyrone is deputy general counsel with Invenergy...a leader in large scale energy generation and storage facilities - wind farms, solar farms, battery storage. It’s real estate, but not as most of us know it. And Tyrone, based in Chicago, is joining us today to give us a look into his BUILT world.

Brian Maughan: I wanted to just start by talking with you a little bit about how you got interested in law in the first place. What was it that kind of drove you or compelled you to become an attorney?

Tyrone Thomas: So in my circumstance, there was no push, there's no one in the family who was an attorney asking me to be an attorney. But I stumbled upon a program when I was in high school, and I grew up in West Philadelphia. When I was in high school, there was a slew of programs called Explorer programs geared at certain careers, medical explorers, police explorers, and I can't remember how, but I stumbled upon a legal explorer's program, applied and was accepted and what the program consisted of, per my memory, my junior year of high school myself and let's say 10 other students, the same vintage, would every Thursday I think we would go downtown, and there's a strip in downtown Philadelphia where all of the law firms and the banks are for the most part. And we would go to this one law firm and they would take us into a large conference room and we would have these sessions once a week. And so each student was assigned an associate who was effectively a mentor, but then the firm, the managing partner, various other practice group leaders would put on presentations for the students and they would talk about the practice of law in various different disciplines. They would train us and we would put on moot court competitions against each other. We got to sit in on a murder trial. And at least for myself, I was entranced. And at that point, I was 16. I said, I want to be an attorney.

Brian: It's a great story. How did you make the transition or make the decision to specialize and work in commercial real estate?

Tyrone Thomas: It was my discovery that other people were making the decision for me and really kind of led me in this direction. I wound up doing an urban studies degree at Hunter College in New York City. And, you know, really interesting, obviously there are some land use elements to it, but there are also a variety of political elements to it. And so flash forward to law school. When I'm interviewing with law firms my first and my second summer, I keep being set up with real estate attorneys for the interviews. And at some point I was noticing a pattern. I'm talking to my wife I met in law school, first day of law school. I'm talking to my wife, girlfriend at the time. And we realized that it's because I have this urban studies degree on my resume that people think that I'm interested in real estate and land use. And I was. I hadn't made a decision as to what direction I wanted to go, but I realized that there was a door being opened for me, that I was not against walking through. And so I said, well, let me lean into that. Let me really lean into that. Let me really start talking to the real estate and land use folks. Let me sort of leverage some of the knowledge that I have and start to gain more, and off to the races we went.

Brian: As you kind of look back, was there anything that kind of, oh the pattern makes sense...my interest in urban studies, maybe where I where I grew up. Is there anything that kind of you can see that led you to this interest that maybe you didn't know at the time was kind of a passion for you?

Tyrone Thomas I think so. I grew up in, like I said, in Philadelphia. And Philadelphia historically has been euclidean-zoned. And so you have these residential neighborhoods and then you have the commercial neighborhoods and there's bleed- over now with later development. But it's still pretty strong. The neighborhood I grew up in, aside from corner stores or bodegas, as they're called in New York, there's no real commercial shopping outside of specific strips. And so, you know, there's a comfort to it. I think here in Chicagoland where I am, it's what you see in the suburbs. It's only the neighborhood. You know what everyone's car looks like, no one else drives through. And I think that there was a benefit to that. But I think that also you could see in the way that the city was laid out, that it also lent itself to a certain type of economic and sometimes racial segregation throughout the city's corridors.

And so going into urban studies, one of the things you've got to look at is some of that city - that urban planning. There were also cultural considerations of the time. If you were designing a city in the early part of the 20th century, you were racially segregating that city because you had people that didn't want to live with other people. And, you know, understanding that, being a part of how you turn some of those things back, I think that was always of interest to me. And so you know, going into law school, we got to do pro bono work in the landlord tenant clinic and work with low income tenants primarily, though some low income landlords in certain circumstances as well. And it always was interesting and there was always that human element to it that I think really hit home for me. And it was something that I saw personally growing up.

Brian narration: That human element kept playing out in his work. Tyrone graduated law school and got a job with a large firm. During the next several years he lived in three different cities, got to know all kinds of different real estate - government buildings, restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes to name a few. And with each transaction he came to better understand these buildings and the people they served...

Tyrone: And so when Invenergy, when the Invenergy opportunity came up, obviously the work they're doing and the impact that it's having on the world is is a draw. But it's also a draw to do it differently. And this is utility scale. But this is not just industrial real estate. This is something different. And at the time, they needed someone to come in. And, you know, there was just a lot of work to do. They had one person for six years he had left and they hired another person. They needed two of us. They basically said, let's have two people do this job for some time. Now, there's no surprise, I've got nine people on my team, lawyers dedicated just to this job. And what will be six paralegals. But we got to come in and just work, get to come in and learn all of the weird things and put process in place. And that that to me was interesting because the work, I geek out over the work itself, I geek out over the problems we run into in the field. And you don't run into more wacky problems than when you're dealing with land that has never had a large scale commercial loan on it before.

Brian Maughan: So let's talk a little bit about the work. Describe for us what Invenergy does and what their goal or what the focus has been and is, and then lead that into the work you do.

Tyrone Thomas Sure. So I think you said it at the outset, Invenergy is a global leader in sustainable energy solutions. And that is appropriately broad. So working backwards, there are you know, we're top in class in our operations and maintenance, which we used to do for the projects that we owned ourselves, we develop, build, own and operate utility scale energy generation and storage facilities and certain other utility scale sustainability solutions. But I would say the bread and butter is the generation facilities and to some degree, the storage. So you've seen about 150 facilities, little more than that, that Invenergy has successfully developed around the world. Many of those are wind farms, utility scale wind farms, utility scale solar farms, or utility scale battery storage, often co-located battery storage, co-located with wind or solar.

And to do that work, there's I mean, it's years in the making from idea inception to the point where we're building the project. But in that process, you can look at it as an engineering shop from one angle and from the other angle you know, it's a real estate developer that does energy. If you're building one of these, let's say, a wind farm, you might need anywhere between 20 to 50 thousand contiguous acres of land. But to do that, to stitch together that footprint, especially because everyone you approach within a given area, is not going to either be willing or able to to participate, so you're going to have these gaps. You really need to be in these rural communities. You need to be in these places where people have large, unobstructed plots of land connected to one another. And that effort of identifying the land and negotiating the land, stitching it all together and then de-risking the land, right, to make sure that we actually can build here  - there's not easements that we can't get around or railroads or subsurface conditions that wouldn't support the facility, those types of things. That's a full time job for dozens of people per project.

Brian Maughan: Tell me a little bit about what is it like to go into those rural communities and to work with them with something so passionate often for all of us, which is the land we live on?

Tyrone Thomas: The thing you have to lead with is respect, right, you have to lead with respect and you have to lead with understanding. And I think when you do that, you're able to get to the solution a lot easier. So, for example, in a lot of these communities, a lot of these agrarian communities, the land that people have, some of that land was passed down from their parents and maybe from their parents. And many of the folks who are for farming this land are thinking in their head, I'm going to pass this down to my children, my grandchildren, this is going to stay in the family for hundreds of years. And so if you approach someone with that mindset and say for a project that let's say it's going to last from the start of the execution of the agreement to to decommissioning of the facility, let's say it’s going to last 50 years max, 30 to 50 years - when you approach them and say, I want to buy this, the answer is no. Or the value they assign to it is astronomical because they're thinking two hundred years into the future and you're thinking 50.

And if you're talking about a lot of these facilities, there's also the opportunity to coexist with the existing agricultural use while only taking certain portions of the surface out of use temporarily for the facilities. And so once you realize that, OK, well, we can get a lease or an easement or lease and easement right on this land and coexist with them, now you can have the conversation. Right? Now, you're not you're not just thinking, oh, I need to aggregate this land, so I'm going to go buy it. That's the simplest way to do it. Now you realize, OK, I can talk to these folks because they've got utility easements, and they've got oil and gas easements on their land. I can approach them the way that they've already been approached in the past. And I can lay out what's basically a partnership, a long term partnership that we're going to enter into with them and their neighbors.

Brian narration: He says when you come to a farmer with a number - what you’re going to pay them to use their land - it’s often more than they’d earn by keeping crops out in those fields.

Tyrone Thomas: We constantly hear about put upon farmers and how certain elements of global trade are depressing the prices of certain crops that are forcing people to only focus on certain crops. And, you know, this is another way that there's an injection of capital into those communities based on the fact that a lot of these folks are landowners in their largest asset is their land.

There are times when we've had discussions around projects where we needed water supply, a municipal water supply and the water. The municipal water system was in shambles. And so we upgraded the entire water system to something that would serve a metropolis instead of this rural area so that it can appropriately serve us. But we also upgraded other parts of it so that now it's going to appropriately serve the communities and be better for everyone. And so the injection of resource and infrastructure upgrade and just pure capital into these communities can sometimes just be monumental.

Brian Maughan: Tyrone, so you've done some pretty significant deals and development work in the Midwest, Oklahoma and North Texas. Do you typically get to go to those parts of the country to see these projects in person? Is that is that interesting for a 16 year old kid from Philadelphia to walk into these rural parts of the United States and talk with them about sustainable energy?

Tyrone Thomas Yes and no. My role is not to sell the project to local stakeholders or to individual landowners, and so I don't have to be in any of these communities. I get to go and I and I do like going to see the result, right, of so much work of so many stakeholders at Invenergy. So I get to go and on occasion I do and I've seen some of the facilities where it's bare land and I've seen some where they're finishing construction, I've seen some where they're in operation. And it's all exciting and it's all great to be able to to to reduce all of the paper pushing that's happening and the phone calls to something something very physical, very tangible. You know, I...There are times when you know I, you want to be careful, you know, depending where you go. And, you know, the reality is that there are places in this country where, many places in this country where someone who looks like me is not always made to feel welcome. The vast majority of the communities we work with, I would say all the communities work with the vast majority of people in those communities are just good, honest people, but in rural areas and in urban areas, there are people who are not and, you know, as someone who grew up in the city, I probably falsely, when you look at some of the numbers in places like Chicago, feel more secure in a crowded area where all of my services are within an arm's reach or within a shot of a good golf ball. And so I take that and I take that into account. Like the idea of me being by myself driving a rental car on a dark road in the middle of nowhere is not something I'm typically signing up for. With that in mind, I have gone to places where I think it makes the most sense and visited and met, on each occasion, some of the most amazing people. 

Brian narration: And when Tyrone does travel to rural areas to assess the landscape...he is looking at a LOT of land. These wind farm transactions are huge. I asked him to put them in context.

Tyrone Thomas: So we talk a lot in parcels because, you know, for your home, typically it's one parcel, right? One tax bin. For a lot of these farm holdings it's multiple parcels because they've aggregated over time together their holdings and for a variety of reasons to not merge them into a single tax parcel. And so, you know, at the end of the year and into the new year, this was public, Invenergy closed financing and started construction on the single largest phase of the largest single phase wind farm in the country's history and the largest single wind farm financing in the country's history, well north of a billion dollars. And when you when you look at that, for those who have looked at title and commercial real estate, you know, you're talking a thousand parcels, you're talking maybe 20, 30 thousand potential issues that have to be vetted and reviewed and acknowledged and maybe then documents have to be drafted if there is an issue that needs to be cured. Conversations have to happen about each of those individual ones internally or with their outside resources. And so it's just a mammoth undertaking that takes, you know, swarms of people years to work through just in a slow, methodical process.

And then wind has another peculiarity that some people might not understand, which is that the turbines can't be placed too close together. Because then they effectively, they wake one another. There's a wind interference. And you would, let's say one turbine is downwind from another. The turbine that's upwind is effectively reducing the wind that's reaching the downwind turbine. And so that turbine can’t generate its full capacity. So they have to be spaced out significantly to allow for that. And that also with wind farms, there's a lot of space that you have to engineer and design in between the turbines. And then each of the turbines is collecting the energy and bringing that back to a transformer. And then obviously there are roads from the public roads to get to each turbine because they're maintained, and in typical fashion, they're climbed every single day, just to check.

Brian: You brought this up a little bit, and I'd like to dig into it a little bit. But you've been a big advocate for people of color in the law. And I'm just curious what spurred your work in that area? Tell us a little bit about that.

Tyrone Thomas: So there are a lot of people who could and should be better advocates for people of color in the law. And as a young attorney, I experienced that firsthand. And it's not only attorneys of color who are leaning into helping attorneys of color in law or looking at diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives. But I would say there's a critical mass of attorneys of color who I think have personal experiences and are doing what I'm doing, which is trying to help people not have the same experiences.

And so you know, I was in law school and people would say, you guys reach out to people and set up for these informational interviews and that's how you get to know what's going on. And I would reach out and reach out to the places that my colleagues, my friends would reach out - friends who were not of color - and, you know, comparable grades, everything else. And I would not get the replies. My name is Tyrone. You know roughly what my color is when you see it on paper, and I noticed that, and that those people that would take the information were, by and large, people of color, people that would sit down with me and have coffee with me. And so at a fundamental level, I always take the coffee. I always take the call. I’m always willing to talk to someone who's putting a law student or a junior lawyer in touch with me just to chat or get an idea, especially lawyers and law students of color, because I know that for a variety of reasons we don't really need to unpack, they're not getting the same level of attention that their colleagues are.

Brian Maughan: Any advice that you would give to those individuals kind of coming up, maybe someone from your hometown or anywhere, really?

Tyrone Thomas Well, I mean, first you can feel free to reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn. I might not get back to you immediately. I am somewhat busy, but I'll get back to you or get you in touch with somebody else. The other thing I would say is do still do the thing that I did, like don't shoot yourself in the foot: try, apply, reach out. Ask the question you never know. One. Two, rejection is a great character builder for future success. And then. And then. And then three, you don't get to you don't get to whine about opportunities that didn't pan out for you if you didn't try for them, and there's a lot of people trying to make the world better than it was in their day. And a lot of people who tried to do the same thing for me, who and hopefully at some point the world will be a little better and you will be able to take advantage of opportunities if you try and you lean into them. The other thing I would say is, look out, there are groups. There are tons of people whose reaction to the same circumstances I described is to create organizations, organizations focused on minority professionals and helping sort of circle the wagons and advance them in the way that the broader business community has not. We all have informal networks that we tap all the time when opportunities come up. And so I would say find those organizations, get involved with them, you're going to be able to see certain opportunities and you're also going to be able to hear people who can commiserate with you. You know, if you're a lawyer and you're African-American, you very well might be in a circumstance where you're the only person. But we can all share stories about being the only person, and it'll make you feel a little less lonely in that journey.

Brian narration: Career guidance isn’t the only way Tyrone gives back. Food insecurity is also on his mind. He’s on the board of his local food bank, and early in the pandemic he founded his own nonprofit, Conversation for Six. That name comes from the food writer MFK Fisher, who once said six people made the perfect number for a casual dinner.

Tyrone says not always knowing where your next meal is going to come from...it’s personal to him. 

Tyrone Thomas: I grew up in a family that was just on the right side of the food insecure line. And there are a lot of people I grew up with who were on the wrong side. And my grandfather was a Baptist minister. We went to his church growing up, which was within our community, and you would do these big dinners on Sundays and the lunch people would donate the food and you would sort of cook these dinners to these big sort of aluminum serving trays. And people would eat. You'd see people eat. But you see people take multiple plates, Styrofoam plates, covered in aluminum foil. And they weren't taking them to people who weren't there, that were taking them home to eat them for the later days. And everyone knew that, which is why, you know, I grew up in a household, and in a culture where it was a bad sign if you had people over and there weren't leftovers. Like there should always be more than enough food if you could do it for folks. And so it was personal, you know, and it was something that I saw firsthand. I went to elementary school with kids who didn't have enough to eat. And so for me, it's been something to stay close to because it affected the community I grew up in. But I think it affects so many other people. And I think that what we ask of a lot of people is really difficult if we can't cover food and safety. At a base level, I think it's very hard to get people to focus on a ton of higher order elements that are necessary for community building and for upward mobility, if you're not covering the basics.

Brain Maughan: Tyrone, I love what you've done. I like the patterns that I see in your efforts, right? Everything focused on sustainability. You've done a good thing. You're doing good things. And I sincerely appreciate your time.

Tyrone Thomas: I appreciate you all having me, so yeah - feeling is mutual.

Brian narration: Thanks for listening to the first episode of BUILT, we hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another show.

Built is a co-production of Fidelity National Financial and PRX Productions. From FNF, our project is run by Annie Bardelas. At PRX, our team is producer Ashley Milne-Tyte, production manager Genevieve Sponsler, production assistant Courtney Fleurantin, and intern Claire Carlander. Audio mastering by Rebecca Seidel. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Special thanks for help with this episode goes to Fred Glassman and Joanna Patilis.

I’m Brian Maughan.

Every story is unique, every property is individual, but we’re all part of this BUILT world.