Spears alumnus Healey builds real estate investment firm 20 years after unique OSU experience

Monday, July 22, 2024

Media Contact: Hallie Hart | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-1050 | hallie.hart@okstate.edu

Damon Healey found inspiration for his dream job when he watched the Detroit Tigers in his home city.

Healey loved baseball, but as he sat in the stadium with his father and two older brothers, he wasn’t daydreaming about crushing a home run or throwing a 100-mph fastball. The teenager gazed beyond the outfield, studying Detroit’s bustling cityscape.

“I always said to myself, ‘I really want to own one of those buildings,’” Healey said. “I was just enamored by the downtown skyline.”

Healey’s fascination with real estate and entrepreneurship started before his undergraduate years, and Oklahoma State University nourished that passion. In the midst of a fast-paced, unconventional college schedule, the 2004 general business graduate devoted extra time to learning about building an enterprise. Twenty years later, that knowledge has benefited Healey as the founder and managing principal of Eternal Companies, a commercial real estate investment firm based in Bethesda, Maryland.

Healey has operated Eternal Companies, which specializes in extended-stay hospitality, since January 2023. Before starting his own venture, Healey facilitated successful expansion projects for Brookfield Asset Management and Lidl US, a European grocery giant that branched across the East Coast of the United States.

As he advanced in the business world, Healey sometimes looked at his materials from OSU business courses, reminding himself of the guest speakers and professors who fed his interests.

“It was that realization of, ‘Wow, people will help you out,’” Healey said. “You can make things happen if you sort of have an insatiable appetite to learn and to grow, and that level of motivation motivates other people. That was my big takeaway from OSU.”

One of those mentors was Vance Fried, then an OSU professor of management who holds a juris doctorate from the University of Michigan. In the early 2000s, OSU’s business school didn’t yet have an entrepreneurship major or the Riata Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, but MBA students could delve into entrepreneurship in a course instructed by Fried.

Healey, who bonded with Fried over their Michigan connections, was eager to enroll in the graduate-level course as an undergraduate student. Although the professor couldn’t promise Healey would receive credit for the class, they agreed he could audit it.

“He was curious and hardworking and obviously willing to not go a standard path,” said Fried, the founding director of OSU’s Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise.

Healey’s journey was more unusual than Fried realized.

On a daily basis, the busy student rode the Big Orange Bus between Tulsa and Stillwater, sometimes not returning home until after midnight.

Healey and his wife, Raven, were newlyweds who lived in Tulsa with their baby daughter, so he commuted to OSU’s main campus. While working toward his degree at OSU, Healey studied at Rhema Bible Training College in Broken Arrow, trying to figure out if he had a future in ministry or business.

With so much on his plate, Healey could have given up an entrepreneurship class that wasn’t guaranteed to earn him credit, but his itch for knowledge persisted. While Fried taught, Healey sat among MBA students as the sole undergraduate.

“It was very intimidating,” Healey said. “That first quarter of the semester I was kind of like a fly on the wall because you’re in there with students with professional work experience. Then after a while, I got comfortable.”

Healey said he thinks he ended up receiving credit for the course, but an A on his transcript wasn’t what mattered most. Nearly 1,000 miles from home, he had found a new environment where he could channel his love for entrepreneurship.

Back in Detroit, the local skyscrapers weren’t the only reasons business and real estate appealed to him. In a city known for industry, Healey saw examples all around him. Family members owned businesses. His father, the Rev. Henry Healey, worked in the automotive industry before starting a church.

“My dad is my biggest hero in life,” Healey said. “Just seeing where he came from in his life in very, very humble beginnings to being able to build something that he truly believed in — for me, that really stuck.”

When Healey pursued ministry, he was following not only his father but also his younger sister, Erika Healey Walker, who studied at Rhema and influenced him to move to Oklahoma for college. Although Healey continues to lean on family and faith, he realized he was gravitating toward a different career path — one that also involves investing in communities.

Healey obtained his master’s degree in urban planning and real estate from the University of Michigan. With his passion for vitalizing cities through real estate, he worked for various businesses in Detroit and Washington, D.C., before founding Eternal Companies.

Extended-stay hospitality, his firm’s primary niche, offers a happy medium between a short stay at a vacation rental and the longer commitment of an apartment lease, Healey said. Eternal Companies also focuses on a range of multifamily, retail, and mixed-use projects, including the conversion of office spaces that remain vacant because of increases in remote workers.

“We want to build a sustainable portfolio of real estate assets that can stand the test of time and really have a positive impact on communities,” Healey said. “It’s about the investors we serve, employees, the communities we serve and doing things for the right reasons and for sustainable outcomes into the future.”

A few months ago, Fried unexpectedly learned about Healey’s recent successes. The professor emeritus was scrolling on LinkedIn when he recognized Healey as the featured guest on a podcast episode of “Real Estate Investing Demystified.” Twenty years after Fried taught Healey, the podcast prompted Fried to reach out and catch up with his former student.

Healey said the world has changed in the two decades since he graduated from OSU, but his entrepreneurship foundation continues to guide him through his relatively young career. His advice for current Spears School of Business students is the same guidance he would share with his college self.

“I’d just say, ‘Go for it,’” Healey said. “Getting an education is still important. Hard work is still incredibly important. Pursuing your interests, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, is incredibly important.

“I probably took the road a little bit less traveled because I just pursued things that I was highly interested in. Figuring out what I was good at, though, is kind of the second layer within those interests. That’s what really helped me shape my entrepreneurial journey.”