Who is Gabriel Nagy? My Story

“Everybody can be great because everybody can serve” –MLK

I grew up in a modest housing development on the outskirts of Bogota. Very early in my life, I learned that the door to opportunity is homeownership.

After school, I would go downtown to help my father pay bills and mail correspondence. On the streets of the city, I saw poverty and inequality firsthand.

When civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, everything changed. I remember my father reading one of his favorite MLK quotes: “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”

Since then I have committed to prepare myself and to chase any opportunity of “power” and to use my gifts of creativity, knowledge, and experience to make a difference in people’s lives.

My first job in the housing sector was as a construction worker. It lasted for one month. With my back broken but my heart relieved, I studied architecture; worked as a housing specialist with the government, banks, and the United Nations; and ran a successful family-owned development company.

Awarded a scholarship, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro and London to learn more about housing and economic development. On my return, I ran for office. I lost the election, but I won the opportunity to be appointed to design and run three large housing, social justice, and economic development projects benefiting more than 200,000 families.

In 1999 I used my experience to rebuild communities affected by war and natural disasters around the world. Many years later, after thousands of houses and countless smiles from happy families, I consider myself a successful visionary and entrepreneur and an accomplished housing developer.

Instead of government subsidies and handouts, my approach to housing and affordability has focused on allowing market signals to work in every neighborhood.

This approach has helped me persuade civic and public sector stakeholders to reimagine housing development, finance, affordability, and supply and demand.

I have always had a heart for communities with economic challenges and opportunities, especially for children and immigrants in those communities.

To understand the history, the economy, and the demographics of the more than 30 underserved and at-risk neighborhoods where I have worked, I read their writers, taste their dishes, and embrace their culture.

But most importantly, by walking the streets in these neighborhoods and visiting their markets, libraries, and parks, I felt people’s fears, dangers, celebrations, and opportunities.

No matter if it was Bogota, Quito, Tegucigalpa, Port-au-Prince, Amman, Beirut, or many others, I felt I knew them all.

But the place I love—the one I am learning about and that I truly call home—is my adopted city: Chicago. I hope to deliver outstanding, unique, compact, diverse, mixed-use developments and housing that is affordable for all, advance renewable energy solutions, transforming communities block-by-block and acquiring new technology while creating jobs and value for families and businesses.