Who we are

Frolic
The term “Frolic” describes a tradition in which hundreds of families gather to raise a barn in one week. Frolics were a demonstration of what is possible when a community comes together to build its future.

We created Frolic to enable communities to build projects that reflect the way they want to live. We partner with single-family homeowners to co-develop multi-family housing on their properties. Homes in our projects can be purchased with low down payments and are affordable to middle-income families.

The Frolic model emerged after 2 years of research at the Center for Real Estate at MIT, with input from over 180 innovators and experts in housing, finance, and community-driven development and support from The Terner Center for Housing Innovation, MIT, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Brookings Institution.

Meet Our Team

Co-founder & CEO

Tamara Knox

Tamara Knox is the CEO and co-founder of Frolic, where she works to expand home ownership using a cooperative financing model. Her vision is to create gentle density in cities across the country, increasing housing supply in a way that promotes affordable homeownership and limits displacement. In her work, she enjoys rethinking funding and ownership structures and exploring ways that physical and financial design nourish community. Before Frolic, she worked in urban economics, affordable housing policy, and with a creative developer committed to equitable economic development. She holds a B.A. in Urban Studies with Honors from Stanford University and a Master in City Planning (MCP) and Master of Science in Real Estate Development (MSRED) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She grew up in Los Angeles and is now happily living in Seattle.

Head of Community Architecture

Kalen McNamara

Kalen is fascinated by shared spaces between buildings and how they can foster stronger and more inclusive communities. With a background in architecture focusing on the public realm, she helps to co-create the vision for shared spaces and to clarify the processes of community building and real estate development. Prior to joining the Frolic team, she worked as an architect designing lively mixed-use commercial spaces and single-family residences. She holds an M.Arch from Rice University and a BA from Brown University. Outside of work, she enjoys cooking, crosswords, and ceramics.

Development Manager

Alex Herbig

Alex Herbig, a multifaceted professional who wears many hats in the realms real estate, architectural design, and creative expression. With a Bachelor's degree in Global Development Studies from Seattle Pacific University and a background in non-profit work, Alex's commitment to addressing social inequity informs his approach to every project he undertakes. As a licensed real estate agent, he navigates the intricacies of entitlements for real estate development, specializing in site design, zoning research, project management and architectural design.Alex has a passion for big picture thinking and creating regenerative development through community-centric space making and fostering connections between people, place, and nature.

Design Fellow

Audrey Ward

Audrey works on the visual identity of Frolic, primarily focusing on website layout and graphic design. She is passionate about the power of beautiful and functional design and is especially interested in the application of design thinking processes to address problems in cities. She currently attends Stanford University where she is pursing a B.S. in Product Design and a Minor in Urban Studies.

Co-founder & COO

Joshua Morrison

Josh is the COO and co-founder of Frolic Community. He approaches development as a designer and planner - with a love of how the smallest details of social, physical, and financial design can shift the larger systems they are apart of. Before co-founding Frolic at MIT, he ran a design collective in Copenhagen, where he studied models of community ownership and living. He holds a Master in City Planning (MCP) from MIT and conducted his bachelors studies in Urban Studies and Environmental Design at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Community Relations Coordinator

Leland Adams

Leland conducts our community outreach and digital marketing planning to spread awareness of cooperatives and home ownership to the greater Seattle area. As a lifelong resident of the central district, he brings insight into connecting urban community and housing. He is an excellent facilitator helping build the larger Frolic Ecosystem of partners, residents, and homebuyers.

He has a B.A. in Business Administration from the Milgard School of Business at the University of Washington and a minor in Data Analytics.

Director of Finance & Strategic Planning

Rob Britton

Rob is passionate about redesigning neighborhoods around people and communities, believing human-scale cities are more vibrant, equitable, and economically sustainable. Though he has a background in numbers and strategy, Rob is driven by this vision of more livable cities designed for people, not profit. Rob holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and BBAs in Finance and Accounting from the University of Oklahoma. When not working, you can find Rob hiking or traveling in his campervan.