Though Matanky is CEO of Matanky Realty Group, a company his father founded in 1955, his path into real estate was hardly preordained. He was practicing law in Europe in the late 1980s when certain tax-law changes back in the U.S. began having a detrimental impact on the real estate industry; he was recalled home to help work through some challenges in the family firm’s portfolios. This led him to reexamine his professional direction.

“I spent the first couple of years trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my career in real estate,” he said. “The work that we were doing in retail at the time was cutting-edge — it had to do with not only well-served communities, but [also] underserved communities and [with] providing convenient, safe, retail service experiences to some of the worst areas in the country in the Midwest. That was fun, and I feel good about making money and giving back at the same time.”

Matanky, 58, has been named a Chicago developer of the year several times, and Matanky Realty is actively developing retail space, as well as office and industrial, across Illinois, Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky and Wisconsin.

ICSC has been instrumental in his career, Matanky says. “It has given me a network of supporters and competitors [who] are supportive,” he said. “I can call upon and bounce ideas off of [them] and ask questions [and] learn from [them]. It has challenged me to stretch further than I might have been able to do without it.”

Matanky was appointed ICSC’s Illinois state director in 2012, and he also serves as North America chairman of the Ambassador Program. He is a member of the ICSC Open-Air Centers Summit Committee and of the ICSC Nexus Conference Program Planning Committee, among other positions.

Back home Matanky has worked with the city of Chicago as a retail development adviser and also served on an advisory panel to the commissioner of the Chicago Building Department. He serves on the Illinois Food Marketing Task Force as well, helping to formulate strategies for eliminating food deserts statewide. Moreover, Matanky participates on a Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago advisory panel, most recently providing input on transit-oriented developments for underserved communities. Matanky’s volunteer activities even extend overseas: He serves on the board of governors of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel.

Some of his most rewarding work, Matanky says, has involved service on the board of the Chicago Housing Authority, the second-largest public-housing agency in the U.S., which helps some 62,000 families. “I get frustrated when parts of our communities and neighborhoods are neglected and suffer as a consequence,” he said. “I have a passion and a mission to help, and it is important that we are fully engaged in every community or [are] as engaged as we possibly can be to make the areas better.”

Meanwhile, Matanky’s focus on developing a more vibrant local retail community remains a top priority for him, and he tries to promote the effort. “The challenge that I put out to two of my competitors is that they each need to come up with five local or five digitally local brands they think they want to help support and engage in such a way that they don’t just grow to one store or two, but [actually] become a brand,” he said.

Matanky is a supporter of the ICSC Foundation and a member of the ICSC PAC Chairman Club. He served as chairman of state operations for the ICSC Central Division, among other volunteer positions.