Alicia Glen

Four years after leaving the de Blasio administration to start her own real estate firm, Alicia Glen concedes wistfully that she still sometimes misses life in public service.

During her tenure as New York’s deputy mayor of economic development, Glen helped create 125,000 units of affordable housing, redeveloped Brooklyn Bridge Park with a housing deal, and launched the expansion of the city’s ferry service. 

“It’s an extraordinary opportunity to do things at scale in the city I grew up in and loved the most. It’s very satisfying,” she said. “Every day I look out of my office window and see things that I’ve worked on and was key to making happen.”

Her day job at MSquared has taken her to Texas, Indiana and across the Northeast, where she has applied strategies for financing mixed-income housing that she honed in New York. That includes leasing a new building in an emerging Dallas neighborhood split 50-50 with market-rate and affordable units, and transforming a public housing campus in Philadelphia into a mixed-income community with homes for seniors and working families as well as new stores and restaurants.

“It’s hugely satisfying to be able to think about future-proofing and building housing for everybody,” she said. “Housing has been so segregated economically, so [it’s good to be] working on these projects that break down barriers and make neighborhoods exciting for all kinds of people.”

Glen is also still engaged with two of New York’s most important infrastructure projects. As board chair of the Trust for Governors Island, she has led the transformation of the southern portion of the island into a climate center with hotel rooms and an events space while redeveloping old buildings as dormitories for students at SUNY’s Stony Brook University. And, last fall, as co-chair of the Gateway Development Commission, Glen attended the Hudson rail tunnel’s groundbreaking on the edge of the West Side Yard with President Joe Biden.

“It was so exciting and crazy at the same time to be underground with this project about to start,” she said. “We were thinking we’re about to do something that’s really big and really matters, and there isn’t one human being within many miles who knows it’s about to happen.”