Greg Aguilar (D-IL-17)

Gregorio Miguel “Greg” Aguilar

Greg Aguilar Congressional Candidate Illinois District 17

Biography of Greg Aguilar from Greg Aguilar for Congress

Greg Aguilar is a native of the Quad-City area and is a proud graduate of United Township High School. As a graduate of the University of Iowa, Greg is known for his leadership in the community and service to local organizations.

Greg is the son of two UAW members and has experienced the highs and lows of being raised in a working class family. He remembers the hard times of the lockout in the 1980’s that put his family out of work and in the food lines with many of his parents’ union brothers and sisters. He also remembers the wonderful events such as the East Moline UAW Christmas parties and the picnics with his own and many other union families. His first mentor in high school was Chuck Thompson, then serving as the 865 UAW President, who encouraged Greg to go to college and get his education.

While attending the University of Iowa, Greg worked as an intern with Proteus Inc, a non-for-profit organization that supported migrant farm workers as they tried to make an honest living. Greg helped create an after work education program that kept the school aged children of migrants focused on their studies. This program allowed those children to earn high school credit in an effort to decrease the very high drop-out rate of the children of migrant farm workers.

After college, Greg worked for the Social Security Administration for several years. Greg learned a great deal about Social Security and provided assistance to the American people in obtaining their benefits including disability, retirement, and SSI. Greg witnessed the struggles of many unemployed people who were applying for their disability benefits. Greg took great satisfaction in seeing the people whose lives were made better because of Social Security.

Greg went on to work at Ascentra Credit Union where he led a successful Latino outreach program which earned a Diamond Award in 2011. This national award recognizes outstanding marketing and business development achievements in the credit union industry.

For many years Aguilar contributed his writing talents to The Dispatch and Rock Island Argus newspaper as a weekly columnist and worked as a guest writer for Hola America, a bilingual newspaper.

In his current role as Director of Multicultural Services at a college in Rock Island, IL, Greg is responsible for serving the needs of multicultural students, reaching out to all members of the campus community on issues of diversity and supporting the outreach efforts for future students both locally and regionally.