Michelle DiFebo Freeman is the owner and CEO of the Carl M. Freeman Companies, a real estate company established in 1947 which specializes in land acquisition, land planning, development and redevelopment, and the management of award-winning, amenity-rich residential communities, neighborhood shopping centers and commercial properties. Freeman Companies also owns and operates three golf courses including Bayside, an 18-hole, award-winning Jack Nicklaus Signature Course in Fenwick Island, DE.
Freeman is also President and Chairman of the Carl M. Freeman Foundation, which has been giving grants to organizations where her employees live, work and play since 1947. She is the founding Chair of the Joshua M. Freeman Foundation, which honors her late husband Joshua Freeman by providing arts and arts education to create opportunities to elevate the human spirit. She was the visionary of the Foundation’s first program: The Freeman Stage at Bayside.
A founding member of Venture Philanthropy Partners, Freeman serves on the board of Landon School in Bethesda and on the Georgetown University Entrepreneurship Advisory Group. She has also chaired AfterDark@THEARC in southeast D.C. for several years, and annually participates in the Covenant House Executive Sleep Out. Freeman received the 2014 Irene and Abe Pollin Humanitarian Award on behalf of the Carl M. Freeman Foundation, Coastal Style Magazine’s Business Woman of the Year for 2015 and 2016, as well as numerous other awards for her business and philanthropic leadership.
Freeman is active in Young Presidents Organization, the Urban Land Institute and the International Council of Shopping Centers. In 2013, Elle magazine named Freeman one of the 10 Most Influential Women in Washington, DC. She has continued to work with Elle magazine in 2016 as part of its ELLE Agenda forum to communicate current women’s issues and initiatives.
Freeman has three children: Nicholas, Benjamin and Juliana Freeman.