Veronica Cardello

I've been in the real estate industry for 10 years, with the last 6 years in Ohio and 4 years before that in Pennsylvania. I want to be very clear that I'm not a realtor or real estate agent - I'm the local government lobbyist for Ohio Realtors. I work with my counterpart Andrew Huffman, where he does the statehouse stuff and I do the local stuff. In Ohio, that means talking to a lot of county commissioners, township trustees, council members, mayors, you name it. I also oversee our global business alliance, which means we help with all the different infrastructural changes or infrastructural needs going across Ohio for jobs coming in from outside of state. My main area of expertise is being a connector, making sure that people get to the right people that they need to talk to when they need to talk to them. No one day is the same for me - you may go into the office thinking you've got all of these things on your plate today, and then by 10 o'clock, it completely changes. An average day is bogged down with quite a few meetings, whether they're in person or on Zoom, and then attending different events, whether I have to drive up to Toledo, or Cleveland, or Youngstown. Sometimes it's a combination of all of the above. My main level of expertise is the knowledge I bring about housing and how the housing ecosystem really impacts a local community. A lot of folks think that jobs are a dime a dozen, but the reality is that homes are where the jobs go to sleep. I think that having that understanding in economic development and making sure that the folks I work with, especially when it comes to local government, have that understanding is crucial. A lot of the times, people become elected officials and they don't know what they're getting into until they've gotten into it.