Farewell from Patrice Frey, President and CEO, Main Street America | Main Street America

Dear Main Street Partners and Friends,

Well, that time has come. With great fondness for the Main Street America Network and all of our important work, I hand the baton to our very talented Hannah White, who is our new Interim President & CEO while a national search for a successor CEO is conducted. If you were in Richmond at the Opening Plenary, you know that Hannah has served in a variety of roles at MSA, most recently as our extraordinarily talented Managing Director. MSA is excellent hands under her leadership.

I want to thank each and every one of you for the opportunity to work alongside you during the last nine years in service of creating shared prosperity, resilient economies, and improved quality of life in downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts across the country.

Many other thanks are in order – especially to MSA’s wonderful Board of Directors, our talented staff, and our passionate and dedicated state, county, and city coordinating partners. I also want to extend a special thanks to our parent organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and to our numerous other partners in supporting strong, prosperous, and equitable Main Streets.

While I will no longer be involved in the day-to-day work of Main Street America, I am collaborating with the MSA Board of Directors on a special project to explore how to help individuals and communities support more small-scale real estate development on Main Streets. We look forward to sharing more about this work over time. In the immediate future, I’m looking forward to taking time to re-charge and spend time with family and friends.

In saying this farewell, I’m sharing a written version of my speech in Richmond where I reflect on lessons learned over the past nine years – I received a number of requests for the PowerPoint, and so I’m sharing a link to that here as well.

Take good care of yourselves, and your communities.

With fondness and gratitude,


Patrice