It doesn’t take Derick Daly more than a few seconds to connect his inherent instinct for entrepreneurship to his family experience.
The grandson of a self-made Caribbean shipping magnate and the son of a father who left the Islands for a career at Gillette Corporation, Derick grew up in a family where taking risks was not only expected but encouraged.
That’s important to understand when one looks at the remarkable network of family-run businesses and charities that Derick and his wife, Dina, have founded since they arrived on the Mid-Shore more than 30 years ago.
Leaving Boston to be close to Dina’s sister in Caroline County, as well as having the financial backing of Derick’s parents to buy their first house, the Dalys began life on the Mid-Shore; a significant departure from their sophisticated life in the big city.
Armed with a degree in accounting and later a master’s in business administration, Derick started a twenty-five-year professional career in finance which would ultimately lead him to become the comptroller of Orion Safety Products in Talbot County. And while that work was satisfying on many levels, including providing well for his growing family, Derick’s inner-entrepreneur could not be contained.
Over the next twenty years, the Dalys would create the Polaris Village Ministries and BAAM (Building African-American Minds) youth center to give back to the community they had come to love.
But to help fund those organizations while also creating a career path for his two sons, Derick found himself launching a high tech company (JACK Innovation), a construction company (JACK Construction), a workforce housing development (NAIMA), and more recently, a real estate firm with sights on creating luxury residential units in Easton (Aspire Outdoors).
The brilliance of all this is how intertwined they are. Except for JACK Innovations, each of these undertakings support the mission of the others. Derick has created a unique mosaic of intertwined causes and resources which, he notes at the end of his Spy interview, can only be credited to his partner Dina’s wisdom and their shared values.
This video is approximately six minutes in length.
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