One of Baldwin County’s largest development companies has added a familiar name to its executive team. Wesley Britt — a former University of Alabama and NFL offensive lineman, and the husband of U.S. Sen. Katie Britt — has joined 68 Ventures as an executive vice president and a member of the company’s executive leadership team.
The Daphne-based firm announced the hire Monday morning through a press release, and company founder Nathan Cox made clear in it that this was a hire years in the making — and decades in the friendship.
“Wesley and I have been close friends for more than two decades, dating back to our freshman year at the University of Alabama,” Cox said in the release. “Throughout every stage of his career, I have watched him earn the trust and respect of the people around him. He is a person of exceptional integrity, humility, and character who embodies the values of our organization.”
Cox also noted the professional ties that preceded the personal one. “It has also been a privilege for 68 Ventures to work alongside the Fine Geddie team over the last several years,” he said. “I know the experience Wesley gained and the relationships he built there will serve him well as he helps us strengthen partnerships, create opportunities, and accelerate our growth throughout the Southeast.”
Who Wesley Britt is
Britt arrives at 68 Ventures after a career that has spanned professional sports, the utility industry and Alabama’s capital. Most recently, he was a top partner at Fine Geddie & Associates, one of the most influential government affairs firms in Montgomery, where he represented clients before the Legislature and state agencies.
Before that, he worked at Alabama Power, focusing on economic and workforce development, community affairs and strategic initiatives — work that involved recruiting industry to the state and helping communities prepare for it. And before any of it, there was football: Britt was an offensive lineman for the Crimson Tide and went on to play in the National Football League for the New England Patriots.
His path to 68 Ventures, in other words, has been less a career change than an extension of a portfolio of relationships. Economic development in Alabama is a relationship business, and Britt has spent his post-football life building exactly the kind of network a development company can use.
What he will do at 68 Ventures
According to the announcement, Britt will work alongside Cox and the company’s other top executives, including President Adam Campbell and CEO Drew Dolan. His portfolio covers business development, strategic partnerships, acquisition sourcing, economic development initiatives, and other growth opportunities across the company’s real estate, operating company and investment platforms.
That is a broad mandate, and it reflects what 68 Ventures has become since its founding. The company grew out of Bellator Real Estate & Development, which Cox launched in 2008 amid the housing bust, assembling investor groups to acquire distressed assets and then building operating businesses around them. That playbook grew into 68 Ventures, formally formed in 2016, which now spans residential and commercial development, real estate services and a portfolio of operating companies — making it one of the largest privately held development enterprises in Baldwin County.
In 2023, the company formalized a leadership transition that saw Dolan, an Alabama law graduate, succeed Cox as CEO while Campbell took the president’s role and Cox moved to the chairman’s chair. Britt’s arrival adds another Alabama football connection to a leadership group that has never been shy about its ties to the university.
Why the hire matters for Baldwin County
Baldwin County has been one of the fastest-growing counties in Alabama and, by some measures, in the nation for the better part of a decade. New rooftops have poured into Daphne, Fairhope, Foley, Spanish Fort and the beach communities, straining roads, schools and utilities, and making the county a focal point for everything from industrial recruitment to residential master-planned communities.
Development companies of 68 Ventures’ scale sit at the center of that growth. The firm’s projects range across the county, and its executives are regular participants in the civic conversations about how to manage an influx of new residents that shows no sign of slowing. An executive vice president whose background is in economic development — luring employers, aligning workforce programs, navigating state incentives — suggests the company intends to keep pushing into commercial and industrial territory, not just residential subdivisions.
It also suggests more activity outside Baldwin County. The press release pointedly describes Britt’s growth mission as spanning “the Southeast,” language that hints at ambitions beyond the county line.
The political dimension
Any time the spouse of a sitting U.S. senator joins a major real estate company, questions about optics follow, and the Britt hire is no exception. Katie Britt, a Republican, was elected to the Senate in 2022 and took office in January 2023 after serving as chief of staff and later president of the Business Council of Alabama. Her husband’s career in state-level government affairs has run in parallel to her rise, and both have deep roots in Alabama’s political and business establishment.
Company leadership declined interview requests about the hire, referring questions to the press release — a decision that itself signals an awareness that the announcement would draw scrutiny. There is nothing unlawful about a senator’s spouse holding a private-sector executive job, and the Britt family’s finances were thoroughly reported during her Senate campaign. But development companies live and die by their relationships with government at every level, and the addition of a government affairs veteran with direct family ties to Alabama’s junior senator is, at minimum, a notable competitive asset.
For his part, Britt’s mandate as described by the company is squarely business development, not government relations. And the firm he leaves, Fine Geddie, remains one of the most respected shops in Montgomery, meaning the relationships he built there stay in place even as he changes sides of the table.
From the Weight Room to the Boardroom
There is a longer tradition here worth noting. Britt is not the first former Alabama football player to build a serious business career in the private sector, but the trajectory is still striking. Players from that era — the early 2000s teams that laid the groundwork for Nick Saban’s dynasty — have gone into coaching, broadcasting, finance and development. Britt’s route, through a Fortune 500 utility’s economic development shop and the state’s premier lobbying firm before landing at a top developer, is a case study in how athletic networks convert into business networks in Alabama.
Cox, for his part, framed the hire not as a courtesy to an old friend but as a deliberate bet on capability. The language of the release — “strengthen partnerships, create opportunities, and accelerate our growth throughout the Southeast” — reads like a company positioning itself for its next phase, with a friend of 20-plus years installed to help drive it.
Whether that next phase includes major new commercial projects, expansion into new markets, or larger roles in the state’s economic development pitches remains to be seen. What is certain is that one of Baldwin County’s most prominent developers has just hired one of the most connected figures in Alabama business and politics — and did it, fittingly, by calling an old frat brother he has known since freshman orientation in Tuscaloosa.