Dylan Hood is an entrepreneur of start-ups in the real estate and construction arena. At the beginning of his career he founded Patria Partners and Patria Construction in Chicago and became the second largest single Section 8 landlord in the Chicagoland area. He also founded Dylan Hood and Associates, a Chicago real estate brokerage.
In 2012, Dylan replaced his real estate commitment to one of social service. His personal story of recovery from substance abuse and its collateral damage enlightened Dylan’s mission to help people with criminal justice histories. In this quest, he enrolled at Loyola University-Chicago’s School of Social Work, and earned his MSW in May 2014. At Loyola, Dylan began to research reentry programs nationwide and found them to be critically inadequate. He decided to create his own, founded Freedom House Reentry Education and Employment Corporation (FREE) in July 2013.
Using personal savings and borrowing money from family members, Dylan developed programming in the areas he discovered to be most in need- men and women coming directly out of prison, veterans with criminal justice involvement, and children of incarcerated parents. His hard work has led to the availability of FREE’s revolutionary programs in Illinois currently, and expanding to New York and California later this year.
