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Date: December 11-24, 1996

location: Monroe

Title: Person of the Year/ Joseph Taylor”s Passage From Africa to Haiti

Author: Mukul Pandya

Subject:

In 1975, his senior year in high school, Joseph Taylor, now a real estate developer who heads Monroe”s Matrix Development Group, traveled to Port Nolloth, an impoverished fishing village near South Africa”s Namibian border. He spent six months there, living in a rectory with Francis Dougherty, a missionary who ran the village church and school. Seventeen-year-old Joe helped the children with their lessons and played with them for hours. Among other things, he introduced them to the frisbee, which they had never seen. “I”m sure there are people in Africa who remember that long ago a lumbering white guy came to Port Nolloth and for some weeks became their best friend,” Taylor says today. “If they don”t remember me, I”m sure they remember the frisbee.” Taylor, 39, remembered his African sojourn during a service at his West Windsor parish church three years ago. That Sunday Thomas Hagen, the priest who delivered the homily, spoke about work that his organization, Hands Together, was doing among Haiti”s destitute children. When Taylor saw the children”s photographs, they set off echoes of his days in Africa. Taylor met Hagen after the mass and asked how he could help Hands Together.

During the past three years Taylor has become Hands Together”s most active champion. His wife Leslie, a Matrix vice president, has joined the organization”s board. For two years Matrix has hosted golf tournaments at its Monroe-based Forsgate Country Club to raise more than $100,000 for work among Haiti”s poor and other projects. In March, Taylor went to Haiti for a week, where he traveled to the country”s poorest areas, visited an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity–Mother Teresa”s order–and a once-abandoned school that he and Leslie have helped rebuild in northern Haiti. “That week was the highlight of my life in 1996,” says Taylor. “A week like that makes you feel more fulfilled than the other 51 weeks.”

What Taylor does during those 51 weeks has made Matrix one of the state”s leading developers. The company this year has struck large deals, and Taylor”s peers have named him president-elect of the state chapter of the National Association of Office and Industrial Properties, an industry organization. But while Taylor”s activities as Matrix”s CEO are well known, he is painfully private about his work in Haiti. In addition, Taylor is a major supporter of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, which supports cancer research in the state. Taylor was co-chair, with CoreStates New Jersey National Bank CEO Thomas Bracken, of the organization”s gala dinner last month.

Each year BUSINESS News names one man or woman its Person of the Year. The honor goes not to the person who made the most money or struck the biggest deal but to someone whose work made a difference in society. At a time when many in business are maligned for selfishness and greed, Taylor”s activities show that selflessness and warm-hearted generosity are still alive. For his contribution to the uplift of Haiti”s poor, and his support of other causes like cancer research, Joseph Taylor is the BUSINESS News Person of the Year for 1996.

Even as the CEO of a group that employs some 500 people, Taylor tempers tough business decisions with a gentle touch. For example, at the height of the real estate recession, Taylor had to fire an employee, but he was so moved by that person”s predicament that Matrix continued to pay the employee”s mortgage even after the termination. Says Leslie Taylor: “This may sound like an obvious thing for a wife to say, but he is the best person I know.”

Taylor grew up in affluent Westchester County in New York. His father Paul–whom Taylor calls his prime role model–worked as an investment banker in Manhattan. Born in 1957 in Philadelphia, Taylor attended a grammar school in Manhattan and then went to Riverdale County High School in the Bronx. As a boy, Joe felt close to priests in his family. Among them were Henry Lavin, a Jesuit, and Tim Collins, a one-time Benedictine monk. Says Taylor: “What I learned from this cross-section of priests was that you should be comfortable being yourself and a little bit different.”

Taylor”s last year in high school was more than a little bit different than that of most 17-year-olds. He had heard about Francis Dougherty and his Port Nolloth mission through a friend, and he convinced his parents to let him go there. “I had trouble getting into the country,” Taylor recalls. “Apartheid being what it was, the South African government didn”t want white American kids going into black areas.” Fortunately, Paul Taylor had a business relationship with Iselin”s Engelhard, which had a network of contacts in South Africa because of its precious metals business. They got Joe Taylor into South Africa.

Taylor remembers Port Nolloth as a “terribly poverty-stricken village.” Though the village had a small white community, most of the mixed-race people lived in huts made of unrolled oil drums. Dougherty”s mission, run by the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, operated a church and a school for 200 children. Taylor reached Port Nolloth in January 1975 and plunged into the mission”s outreach program. Though he mostly taught the children and helped organize sports, he also went with Dougherty into the slums. “We spent a lot of time working with sick people,” Taylor recalls.

A measles epidemic broke out in the summer, and Taylor found himself working around the clock. “We were burying several people a day–some of them just kids,” he remembers. Taylor, too, caught the measles. According to Leslie Taylor, “Joe was so sick that he almost died.” Though Taylor had been miserable and homesick during the first half of his visit, when it was time to return he did not want to leave. “They had to take me back kicking and screaming,” he says. After his return to the U.S. Taylor had problems adjusting to life at home. “It was difficult to fit,” he says. “I had become very anti-materialistic, and I was a miserable person to have around.” One day Taylor”s mother took him aside and told him to “shake this experience out of your soul and move on.” Taylor eventually did that. “You just have to put an experience like that inside you,” he says.

Taylor graduated in 1979 from Bowdoin College with a bachelor”s degree in English and History. “If I had my druthers, I would much rather have been paid to sail boats than to be in business,” he jokes. “But I soon realized no one was going to pay me to sail boats. So I interviewed at banks, insurance firms and real estate companies, and real estate seemed to be the way to go.” The same year he joined Tishman Management Leasing in Manhattan, a spinoff of Tishman Construction.

In 1980, at the beginning of the real estate boom that transformed New Jersey, Taylor moved here, working first as a project manager for R.H. Realty, the predecessor company to Matrix. He became the CEO after the company was reorganized in 1987. Longtime friends say he slogged hard and developed a keen business sense. “He has incredible knowledge of the business environment,” says Gerald Hull, a partner in the Morristown law firm Shanley & Fisher, who has represented Taylor in some 800 deals. “He”s on top of everything.”

The real estate boom and the recession left Taylor with little time for social activities. “My involvement was mainly economic,” Taylor says. “It was very difficult to find time, but writing a check doesn”t take any time.” In 1993, Taylor had an unexpected encounter. While attending Mass, Taylor heard Hagen”s sermon about Hands Together”s work in Haiti. Taylor was attracted to Hagen in part because he belonged to the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, the same religious order as Port Nolloth”s Dougherty. But Taylor also was drawn by Hagen”s quirky sense of humor. Hagen, for example, always let his dog Shortie follow him up to the altar, joking that the dog walked out on his homilies. The two men soon became close friends. “There was an immediate and natural bond between us,” says Taylor.

Hagen says Taylor has contributed enormously to Hands Together. Though several New Jersey businesspeople support Hands Together”s efforts, “Joe is certainly the top one,” Hagen says. When the Forsgate Country Club organized two fund-raisers, all the money raised went to Hands Together programs. “In other business fund-raisers, organizers often split the earnings with us,” says Hagen. “But with Joe, we didn”t pay a dime.” Hagen also says that Taylor “is not the type of person who just writes a check. When he came to Haiti this year, he wanted to go to the most destitute areas. He moved from one village to the other, living in tough conditions without complaining a bit. The way he would interact with the kids–putting his arms around them–was so impressive. He was a great inspiration.”

Taylor says the Port au Prince neighborhoods and other areas in Haiti where he traveled had the poorest living conditions he has seen. “These places are indescribable,” he says. “They are fetid, overcrowded and unhealthy. Most people live in fear because of political unrest.” Even so, the cheerful spirit of Haiti”s poor deeply moved Taylor. “If you look at these kids, they are always smiling,” he says. “They have everything to complain about and be angry about, but if you look at their smiles, you see how happy they are. You go to a place like that, and you learn how lucky you are. You learn how much good there is in people who have very little reason, by our standards, to be good.”

When Taylor returned from Haiti, he was very quiet for two days. Then he began to talk to his wife about his trip, describing a visit to an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity. Children were crammed 30 to a room in small iron cots. Taylor told Leslie that he picked up a baby, which fell asleep in his arms. He wept as he told her about it.

Taylor”s concern for humanity is not limited just to places that are far away. Moved by concern about relatives and employees who suffer from cancer, Taylor has also been supporting the Cancer Research Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick. “If we can build up this institute, people would not have to travel to New York or Philadelphia,” he says. William Hait, the institute”s director, met Taylor two years ago at a time when Matrix was looking for a beneficiary for its Forsgate Pro-Am Golf Tournament, which the developer sponsors jointly with CoreStates New Jersey National Bank. “It”s been a tremendous thing,” says Hait. “This year 12,000 people turned up for the event. We have raised more than $100,000 in two years.” He adds that the institute”s gala dinner netted $300,000.

“Joe is the ultimate great guy,” says Hait. “He”s smart, no-nonsense and committed.” Agrees Bracken of CoreStates: “Joe is one of those rare citizens who wants to give something back to the state. He is very forthright and has no hidden agendas.” Bracken believes that if Taylor has a flaw, it is that he does not play golf. Quips Tim Losch, another CoreStates executive: “For someone who owns so many golf courses, it”s like owning ocean liners but not going out to sea.”

Taylor”s dream is that by the time his children are of college age, in eight to 10 years, he will be able to spend more time with his family and on projects like Haiti. Today, as the Taylors prepare for the holiday season, they have given their son Jess a small sum of money. Their condition is that he should not spend it on himself but give it away to someone who needs it. “He”s just as excited about it as can be,” Taylor says. “I hope my children learn that it is more important to go to a soup kitchen than to go out to dinner. I hope they learn to give, because it makes you happier.”

Who could teach Jess that lesson better than his father?