Nick Williams.
Nick Williams, 32
Director of development at Solar Landscape
Not many people in the construction industry can say they played professional football before they started their current career.
Nick Williams took an unusual path to real estate — through the National Football League. The central New Jersey native played varsity football while studying economics at the University of Connecticut and was signed right out of college by the Washington, D.C., team now known as the Commanders. The wide receiver did a two-year stint in D.C. before spending three years with the Atlanta Falcons, who went to the Super Bowl in 2017.
During his last two years in the league, 2018 and 2019, Williams was signed and released by four different teams: the Tennessee Titans, Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers. He also started figuring out what he wanted to do after football, taking continuing education classes in the offseason. Then he began investing in real estate.
“I got interested in community engagement and sustainability — better processes, doing things more efficiently, waste management and recycling,” Williams explained. At Solar Landscape, “I had the opportunity to meet Shaun [Keegan] and the team and see what they were doing from a community solar perspective.”
In 2020, while the pandemic was in full swing, Williams took a job as director of development at Solar Landscape, a contractor and developer of commercial solar arrays and community solar projects. He goes into places with newly legalized community solar programs and works with landlords and local governments to find sites that will work for a solar installation. Typically, Williams approaches the owners of large industrial buildings, like warehouses and self-storage facilities, and tells them that they can get a tax break for hosting a community solar installation.
To date, his largest project is in Cranbury, N.J., not far from his hometown of New Windsor. The 700,000-square-foot rooftop installation provides 8 megawatts of renewable solar energy to nearby towns, serving low- and moderate-income New Jersey residents.
These days, Williams says he’s getting competitive about a new sport that can help him network in the real estate industry: golf. —R.B.R.
