George A. Ranney, Jr.

George Ranney is Chairman and CEO of Prairie Holdings Corporation – https://prairiecrossing.com/, which is building Prairie Crossing, a nationally known real estate development designed on conservation principles in suburban Grayslake, Illinois. Ranney is also Senior Counsel at the law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw where he was a partner for fifteen years.

He is also volunteer President and CEO of Chicago Metropolis 2020, a business-based organization formed by The Commercial Club of Chicago to improve the region’s economic competitiveness. Inspired by the Club’s successful Burnham Plan of 1909, Metropolis is implementing long-term policies for regional growth, emphasizing transportation, housing, early childhood education, and criminal justice. Ranney has been a member of The Commercial Club since 1985.

He spent eighteen years with Inland Steel Industries, where he served as Vice President for Raw Materials and also as Inland’s Vice President and General Counsel.

He was Deputy Budget Director for the State of Illinois under Governor Richard Ogilvie starting in 1969. He chaired the Task Force on the Future of Illinois for Governor Thompson and Governor Edgar’s Task Force on conversion of the Joliet Arsenal to peacetime purposes. He was a member of Governor Ryan’s Universal Preschool Task Force, and a public member of the Growth Task Force of the Illinois General Assembly from 1999-2002. He chaired the Governor’s Task Force which proposed the Regional Transportation Authority and led the successful six-county referendum campaign that approved it.

e serves on the Boards of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the University of Chicago, Field Foundation of Illinois, the Metropolitan Planning Council, Chicago Educational Television, and The Conservation Fund. He is also a trustee for the Committee on Economic Development in Washington, D.C., and is on the Chicago Committee for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

He has written articles for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Crain’s Chicago Business, Atlantic Monthly and University of Chicago Law Review. He has taught law and public policy at the University of Chicago, chaired its Visiting Committee for the Harris School of Public Policy, and now chairs its Trustee Committee on Civic and Community Affairs.

He graduated magna cum laude in History and Literature in 1962 from Harvard College, after which he was awarded a Shaw Travelling Fellowship. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

He grew up on a farm in Libertyville Township, where he now lives with his wife Vicky.