As a husband, father, architect, and artist, Ozzie is a multi-faceted leader with a unique combination of lived experiences, achievements, and insights that make Ozzie the candidate to lead Portland. Here are just a few qualities and accomplishments that make Ozzie a great Mayor for Portland in 2020.
Pictured from left to right: Ozzie’s son Hilario González, daughter Maya, Ozzie, and his wife Dr. Elizabeth Flores
Partnerships and People Skills
Ozzie has the people skills to build effective partnerships. Offering more than rhetoric, Ozzie’s experience includes employing proven methods for fostering discussion between stakeholders—even those with competing goals. When Intel resolved to become the world’s first microchip manufacturer to have LEED certified factories, Ozzie was the person who brought the US Green Building Council to the table, certified Intel’s first ten Industrial facilities, and helped found the USGBC’s first official LEED User Group. Whether public, private, or non-profit, Ozzie has experience building partnerships with organizations of all types.
From corporate leaders to every-day life, Ozzie has learned to navigate through multiple worlds, in multiple languages, and with diverse people. Ozzie is equally at home collaborating amongst business leaders, government officials, artists, and community groups. Growing up in the Los Angeles barrio, every day was a series of negotiations and difficult conversations for Ozzie. It was there that he learned how to work with people of all types and maintain diplomacy despite an often hostile environment. From policy advisory panels to diversity program management, Ozzie has spent his life getting people to cooperate even under tense circumstances. He has a passion for bringing diverse voices to the table to realize common goals.
Designing and Implementing
a Sustainable Future
Sustainability is a way of life for Ozzie. From his educational upbringing to his professional career, Ozzie has worked since childhood to make the way we live a more sustainable system. When it comes to engaging in the global environmental debate, Ozzie has been a vocal educator, a community activist, and has worked within the system as a policy analyst eliminating policy barriers to positive change.
Ozzie’s approach to sustainable development is unique because it was born out of poverty. From a young age, Ozzie learned that resources were finite, that we must live within our means, and that wastefulness is a luxury no one can afford.
And Ozzie lives up to his values. In his first year as a TriMet Board Member, Ozzie oversaw the implementation of a low-income fare program, the de-criminalization of fare evasion, and the commitment to immediately begin phasing-out all fossil fuel driven vehicles from the TriMet fleet. Over his 15 years of architectural practice, Ozzie has also participated in designing green building projects from small scale straw bale classrooms all the way up to 1M s.f. LEED Certified Advanced Technology Research Facilities and Net Zero Energy/Water/Waste Cities for 1 million people.
Artist and Arts Lover
As a counterbalance to Ozzie’s technical acumen is his artistic side—something he is very proud of. Ozzie has not only served on the Regional Arts and Culture Council Board for the last five years, he has also been a working artist the entire time. Ozzie has performed as an actor, dancer, and vocalist and has a special place in his heart for the creative community and artmakers of Portland.
As an artist, Ozzie knows how vital the arts are to a livable city and sees art and creativity not as a “nice to have” luxury but as an essential ingredient to overcoming today’s challenges. He not only wants to see the creative spaces of Portland filled with enthusiastic patrons and thriving artists, he wants to see them as central to our problem-solving process. Ozzie knows first-hand how creativity creates empathy, and how artists are master problem-solvers. At a time when Portland yearns for creative solutions – who better to facilitate the process than a creative leader!