Our Story
M|B|P was founded by Josh McManus and Joel Steinhaus. Josh and Joel first started making plans together when simultaneously at the right hands of two of America’s most audacious founders, both on missions to reshape places and rethink real estate. Having worked with some of the largest corporations, government agencies and foundations, they established a partnership on shared values and tested methods for making on-the-ground impact at scale.
Josh McManus
Josh McManus is a civic folk artist, public-private developer and activist for adaptation whose work centers on restoring the Right to Rise — the belief that cities and citizens deserve equitable access to opportunity, reinvention and long-term prosperity. Known for translating expansive civic vision into pragmatic action, McManus treats economic, institutional and narrative systems as primary materials — shaping them into platforms for shared futures.
Over the past three decades, he has led and supported transformational efforts in post-industrial American cities.
His work includes:
Reorganizing the multi-billion-dollar Rocket Mortgage family of companies to align business growth with Detroit’s civic recovery;
Catalyzing entrepreneurship and talent ecosystems that helped reposition Chattanooga following decades of decline;
Contributing to the Ford+ Corporate Reinvention Plan during seven years embedded with Ford Motor Company;
Supporting the revitalization of Michigan Central Station as a $1.2 billion living laboratory for the future of mobility;
Helping shape Ford’s Community Center for Economic Mobility in Stanton, Tennessee.
Previously, McManus served as Chief Operating Officer for Dan Gilbert, overseeing a for-more-than-profit reorganization spanning businesses, real estate and professional sports — aligning private enterprise with long-term civic stewardship.
Earlier in his career, he co-founded CreateHere in Chattanooga, catalyzing one of the largest community visioning efforts of its time and seeding a generation of entrepreneurs and civic leaders.
He holds business degrees from Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The Economist, Entrepreneur, GOOD, The Huffington Post, and Garden & Gun. He has been recognized nationally as a Next American Vanguard and internationally as a Marshall Memorial Fellow.
Joel Steinhaus
Joel Steinhaus has spent his career at the nexus of business, policy and media, assembling the partners and pieces necessary to make ambitious visions a reality. As an entrepreneur, executive and non-profit leader, he has operated across a range of industries, helping to transform organizations, launch new initiatives and build communities.
During the height of the pandemic, Steinhaus partnered with a group of New York City real estate family offices to launch Daybase, a network of neighborhood workspaces, with a mission to reinvent the way work works.
Steinhaus previously developed WeWork’s enterprise business, the company’s largest, most profitable segment working with large enterprises to support better business outcomes and culture change through the design and use of space.
Prior to WeWork, he was Managing Director and Chief of Staff to the Chairman at Citigroup, as the global bank underwent a massive business and cultural transformation following the financial crisis.
Steinhaus is a trustee and past Chairman of New Yorkers for Parks (NY4P), a century-old civic organization, and is a former Trustee of uAspire, Corlears School and the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association. He currently sits on the Board of Advisors of Heard Capital, a minority-owned asset management firm.
Steinhaus is a member of the Economic Club of New York and a recent term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was also a 2015 David Rockefeller Fellow through the Partnership for New York City. Joel has an MBA from the Yale School of Management, where he was a Sutphin Fellow and a Greenberg World Fellow. Joel earned an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.