2026 State of Housing in Charlotte Summit

Joan B. Goode currently serves as the 2026 President of the Canopy Realtor® Association, Canopy MLS, and Canopy Housing Foundation. A leading broker in the industry since 2005, Joan quickly established herself as a top-producing professional in the Greater Charlotte area, earning both the Charlotte Regional REALTORS® Rookie of the Year and the NC REALTORS® Rising Star Award early in her career. Over her two decades in real estate, she has maintained an exceptional sales record earning recognition as one of the Top 5 Agents in North Carolina by Newsweek Magazine in 2020, ranking among the state’s Top 50 Agents by RealTrends in 2025, and receiving the Five-Star Real Estate Professional honor every year since 2012.

Beyond her sales production, Joan is widely recognized for her industry leadership and global reach. Named the 2023 Canopy Realtor® of the Year, she serves on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), NC REALTORS®, and at Canopy Realtor® Association. A dynamic Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® (LRE) member, Joan has placed over 100 referrals, earned the 2025 LeadingRE Global Referral Award, and represented top industry leaders as an international panelist at the LeadingRE Global Symposium in Prague.

Driven by a profound commitment to community service, Joan is the founder of Canopy Housing Foundation’s Annual Strides for Shelter 5K – Racing to Cure Homelessness. Through her vision and leadership, the Canopy Housing Foundation has distributed over $242,000 in race proceeds to nine local beneficiaries over the event’s ten-year history to directly assist those without shelter. Her outreach also includes longstanding support for YMCA Community Outreach, The Relatives, Urban Ministries, and A Child’s Place. Outside of her career and advocacy, Joan is an avid runner who enjoys traveling with her college sweetheart and husband, Lane, and their three children.

Shawn Kennedy is a serial entrepreneur, real estate developer and community leader with more than two decades of experience in business ownership and community impact. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, cum laude, from Morehouse College in 2004, where he received a United Negro College Fund scholarship. At 19, while still a student, he launched his first venture, Half Time Sports, a sports apparel retailer that grew to five markets, including Charlotte and Atlanta.

Kennedy went on to found, scale and sell multiple hospitality and entertainment businesses. Among them are Allure Restaurant, Privilege, Vanity and Graham Street Station, a multi-use hospitality and entertainment complex in Charlotte’s Camp North End.

In 2007, he founded Kennedy Properties. The company owns or manages approximately 85 rental homes across North and South Carolina, with a mission of providing safe, stable and affordable housing for working families.

In 2019, he founded Kennedy Properties & Development, a real estate development and consulting firm. It partners with municipalities, nonprofits, faith-based institutions and developers on affordable and attainable housing.

In 2022, he became a founding partner of Prosperity Alliance, a nonprofit that pairs housing development with homebuyer education and financial literacy training.

Together, these organizations have more than 700 projects in partnership with the cities of Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro, along with several faith-based housing initiatives. Their work creates homeownership opportunities for first-time buyers, teachers, seniors and other working families being priced out of the market.

Since 2024, Kennedy has led the redevelopment of the historic Excelsior Club, one of Charlotte’s most significant African American landmarks. Through the Historic Excelsior project and Lucille Kitchen, he is combining workforce development, entrepreneurship training, financial literacy and cultural preservation to create pathways to economic mobility.

Kennedy is also committed to youth development. In 2018, he founded Meck Investment Company, a nonprofit that runs Impact Camp. The camp has provided mentorship, leadership development, entrepreneurship training and financial education to more than 2,000 young people.

His work is guided by a simple belief: entrepreneurship, real estate, education and community development, combined, can create lasting economic opportunity and generational wealth.

Liz Ward is the founder and owner of Give Impact, a Charlotte-based organization focused on advancing community-centered real estate development and social impact initiatives. A graduate of the UNC Charlotte Master of Science in Real Estate program (Class of 2014), Liz has built her career at the intersection of development, philanthropy and public-private collaboration. Her work brings together developers, nonprofits and civic leaders to create projects that expand opportunity, particularly in affordable housing and community infrastructure. Drawing on both technical real estate expertise and a passion for impact-driven work, Liz is committed to helping shape more equitable and connected communities in Charlotte and beyond.

Liz is also the host of the podcast Authentic Conversations, where she explores leadership, purpose and impact with a wide range of guests. She is proudly the mother of two, and her personal and professional life are both rooted in a deep commitment to building stronger, more connected communities in Charlotte and beyond.