Ambition. Entrepreneurship. Tenacity. As a two-time Roosevelt graduate and founding partner of a fast-growing real estate firm, Leo Solarte has what it takes to achieve his ultimate goal: leaving a legacy.

By the time Leo Solarte (BB, ’09; MSRE, ’11) finished his master’s in real estate in 2011, he had racked up 40,000 miles driving to properties on the potholed streets of Chicago’s South Side. Taking nine classes in one semester and managing the retail division of First Western Properties, a real estate firm, left time for little else. The passenger seat of his 2004 Cadillac CTS held his essentials: scattered listing sheets, textbooks, brochures and a computer. But it was worth it for Solarte. He had a legacy to leave.

“I bleed Chicago,” he said. “I love this city and want to leave my stamp on it. It’s my own little way of going down in the history books on a local scale.”

As co-founder and managing partner of boutique real estate firm Greenstone Partners, Solarte is driven to give back to his city, a trait he inherited from a long lineage of Chicago pioneers. His fifth great-grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence, and his family settled in Chicago in the 1860s and most are still in the area. Solarte says earning a reputation as an honest and ambitious businessman is his way of leaving a legacy his children can be proud of, and he’s off to a strong start. He was made an honoree of the National Association of Realtors’ 30 Under 30 Class of 2012, a CoStar Retail Power Broker for 2011, 2012 and 2013, and has been named Top Retail Leasing & Sales Agent annually since 2010 by the Chicago Association of Realtors’ Commercial Forum.

“I bleed Chicago. I love this city and want to leave my stamp on it. It’s my own little way of going down in the history books on a local scale.”

The 30-year old didn’t always have his sights set on real estate. After growing up in Portage Park on Chicago’s northwest side, he attended Whitney Young High School and worked at a used car dealership while taking night classes part-time at community college. He developed an interest in finance after one of his coworkers encouraged him to get a broker’s license, and enrolled at Roosevelt in 2007 to pursue finance.

When the stock market crashed in 2008, the mortgage business suffered dramatically. Solarte took the opportunity to stop working and study at Roosevelt full-time, finishing two years’ worth of classes in one year. Getting approvals to take nine classes in one semester impressed Roosevelt administrators, and the business dean encouraged Solarte to stay and earn a master’s in real estate. Solarte had been offered a real estate job the month he graduated, so he took it as a sign and dove headfirst into his master’s while working full-time.

“Without the networking opportunities provided to students in the program, it would have been very hard to have the sphere of influence I had as I started my career. The connections make a big difference,” he said.

Solarte’s professors picked up his ambition. “Leo has a characteristic we love in real estate—entrepreneurship,” said Jon B. DeVries, director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate (MBIRE). “To be successful in real estate entrepreneurship, you have to move up the value chain from managing to leasing to owning to developing. This takes tenacity, a solid network and risk-taking. Leo has all of these qualities, and he’s been able to move up the chain with almost no interruption.” Solarte was named one of the program’s earliest scholarship recipients of the Joseph and Joyce Freed: Tomorrow’s Leaders in Real Estate Initiative in 2009 and 2010.

After graduating with his master’s in 2011, Solarte continued working at First Western Properties and watched as it grew from relatively few to 200 listings over the course of five years. He also knew he was paying the company a percentage of the commissions.

Three of his colleagues from other companies aired similar frustrations at quarterly dinners at Corcoran’s bar in Old Town. The four met initially to talk shop and have a few beers, but as time went on the conversations turned serious, all agreeing they wanted to start their own firm. “Like every other business out there, ours started over drinks,” Solarte laughed.

Downtown Chicago

Now in its second year, Greenstone Partners—formed by Solarte, Peter Weitz, Jason St. John and David Tomlinson—manages over two million square feet of commercial properties throughout the Midwest and represents all of 7-Eleven’s new store development in Illinois. Solarte attributes the firm’s growth to the partners’ shared vision: establishing strong relationships with clients and providing them with sound advice even when there’s no commission on the table. “We’re very advisory in our roles; we’re not pressure salesmen at all. We’re aggressive and we go to bat for our clients, but we chose ‘Greenstone Partners’ instead of ‘Greenstone Realty’ to emphasize that we partner with our clients and are here for the long term,” Solarte said.

Managing relationships has proven another of Solarte’s skills. Tomlinson, whose first impression of Solarte was as a hard-nosed, cigarette-smoking South Side salesman, remembers a time last year when the four partners disagreed on a business strategy. Tomlinson grew frustrated and exhausted. But he got a call from Solarte the next day that changed his outlook from then on.

“Leo went out of his way to extend an arm and tell me how appreciative he was of my role at the company. It really changed the whole tide of the conversations we were having,” Tomlinson said. “He’s selfless, he’s tireless, he’s all about the team. I’ll never forget it.”

In 2015 Solarte decided to give back to another team: his alma mater. A new member of the MBIRE Advisory Board, Solarte said he hopes to mentor budding real estate professionals. His advice? “Reputation. That’s it. Your reputation is your business. You have to work hard and know what you’re talking about. There are a lot of smart people in this business and you can’t fake your way through it.”

Outside of Greenstone Partners and the advisory board, Solarte keeps busy with his wife Lupe and two sons (Vincent, 2, and Nicholas, 1) and with amateur boxing. In May, Solarte fought for the first time in the Chicago Real Estate Rumble, which raised money for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago. Before the fight, he said he felt good because his trainer was a former WBC lightweight champion who fought greats like Manny Pacquiao. “I think that’s a good trainer to have,” he laughed. Though he didn’t win, he’s already training for next year. “I’m not giving up,” he said.

Solarte Close-Up