Meet Our Board Members: Ryan Kruzel

November 13, 2019

Associate Board

Born: Bennington, VT

College and major: Boston College, business with a concentration in finance

Position: Vice President of Investments at Pritzker Realty Group

“Our group focuses solely on industrial buildings and multi-family buildings. I am responsible for equity and debt financing activities for our industrial assets. This includes a little bit of everything from acquisitions, development, asset management, and dispositions.

Favorite activities during high school:

“I ran cross country, played basketball, played lacrosse, and was active in student government as well.”

Favorite travel destination:

“I’d probably say Iceland. We did a lot of hiking and natural sightseeing and it was fantastic. Nothing like I’d ever seen and just a beautiful country.”

Finding Mercy Home:

“I moved out to Chicago and was looking for somewhere to volunteer and working with kids and education was always important to me. I had a friend who was working at Mercy Home and he recommended that I get involved with the Associate Board, and that’s how I originally got connected to the Home.”

Favorite part about Mercy Home’s mission:

“I think it’s a really great organization and very community-oriented, which is important. Every kid should have the ability to grow up and be successful and be what they want to be. I think Mercy Home does a good job providing kids with this opportunity by providing resources such as access to education, a nurturing environment, therapy, and a community that helps kids them grow up to be good, successful people.”

Proudest accomplishment:

“I did a Half Ironman a couple of years ago and I am pretty proud of that. It’s a total of 70.3 miles – a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike, and a 13.1-mile run. I ultimately did two that summer because the first one I signed up for was in Racine, Wisconsin, and the swim portion of the race was cancelled. Overnight, the water temperatures dropped off, so the race directors cancelled the swim due to unsafe conditions, so I just did the bike and the run that day. It felt a bit incomplete, so I found another race in Michigan a couple weeks later in order to finish a whole race.”