5,400 Baltimore residents hired at Hopkins. $1.4 billion invested in city businesses. See what Baltimoreans are accomplishing with Johns Hopkins.
Jeffrey Hargrave’s commercial construction company, Mahogany Inc., is leaving its mark across Baltimore.
Today, this Baltimore City native and his team have bid on and won highly competitive contracts for some of Johns Hopkins’s most significant construction investments in the city.
But this success rests on a foundation Hargrave laid over many years as a student at Baltimore’s Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School, a carpenter, a foreman, and eventually, a proud owner and CEO of Mahogany.
Johns Hopkins is proud of its extensive, intentional efforts over the past decade to invest in people like Jeff, one of the many neighbors and partners in this city we are proud to call home. Since Johns Hopkins launched its HopkinsLocal initiative in 2015, Baltimore businesses like Mahogany have won $646 million in design and construction contracts with the university and health system. Over that same period, the university and the health system have spent $1.4 billion with Baltimore City businesses and hired nearly 5,400 residents of some of the neighborhoods facing the highest rates of unemployment and historic disinvestment.
As Hargrave and the Mahogany team grew their business, they capitalized on local training opportunities like the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business program, a Hopkins-supported accelerator for small businesses, and the HopkinsLocal BUILD College, where they honed their skills, trained with industry leaders and expanded their capacity for bigger jobs.
“Johns Hopkins made it possible for my company to grow from a subcontractor to a prime contractor,” says Hargrave, whose firm is now consistently delivering high-quality work on complex building projects in his hometown, while employing workers from its neighborhoods.
“Johns Hopkins goes out of its way to make sure that local companies participate in their projects,” he adds. “That’s huge.”
A new independent analysis by Econsult Solutions finds that one in every five jobs in Baltimore City is supported by the work that happens at Johns Hopkins. The study also found that Johns Hopkins generates a $19.4 billion annual economic impact within Baltimore.
As Hopkins celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, its role as an engine of opportunity for Baltimore residents has never been more pronounced.
“For 150 years, Hopkins has been inextricably tied to the city we have always called home, and the people of Baltimore have supported Johns Hopkins since its founding,” says Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels.
“Today, Baltimore’s success is our priority, and for more than a decade, Johns Hopkins has been marshaling our resources to invest in jobs, businesses, economic and educational opportunities in partnership with the people and communities that call Baltimore home.”
Johns Hopkins’ research activity, the backbone of this institution since its founding, generates significant economic impact for the city.
As it has for decades, Johns Hopkins researchers earned billions of dollars in competitive and merit-based grants from the federal government in fiscal year 2024. Those research efforts produced a nearly $10 billion cascade of economic impact supporting nearly 38,000 jobs in Maryland.
Hopkins also serves as a primary driver of the state’s innovation economy. In the past decade, discoveries made by Hopkins researchers in Baltimore have spun out in the form of more than 142 startups that raised $4.8 billion in venture capital. Significantly,43 percent of that money stayed in Baltimore. Companies that were free to expand to markets like Boston or the Bay Area have instead stayed here, hiring local talent and reaffirming their commitment to the city.
As Johns Hopkins looks to the next 150 years, it looks forward to sustaining its investment in the promise of its home city, including through partnering with Baltimoreans just like Jeff.