Fernando R. De León

The youngest of six children, Fernando De Leon was born in 1978 and was the only member of his family that benefited from both American citizenship and education. Their home, however, was a town in Mexico called Matamoros, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. The family household, where De Leon shared his bedroom with four brothers, was a busy one. There was a 16- year span between he and his oldest sibling. “My sister and brothers raised me to understand the blessing it was for me to be born in the United States. They energetically supported my hopes and dreams and knew that if I was educated in the United States, I would have a very different life—I had a golden ticket.”

When it came time to start school, De Leon attended an elementary school in Brownsville. After returning home each afternoon, he went to an agrarian school in Matamoros. “This school was mainly for kids who worked during the day,” he says. “My classmates were very humble and impoverished. From the beginning, I was intrigued with the different cultures I was straddling, and the different educational systems to which I was being exposed. I became adept at very rapidly contrasting, processing, and bridging these two worlds. Eventually, it would become the basis for the way in which I do business today, which requires me to organize people for a mission, create consensus, and find solutions to problems.”

De Leon’s father, who simultaneously was a lawyer and owned a junkyard business, became ill when De Leon was nine years old. “I used to play chess with my father and debate the great philosophers because he treated me like I was one of his older children, and I think because he felt that his time was slipping away.”

When De Leon was eight years old, his 17-year-old brother tragically passed away. “This was a very difficult time for my mother; my brother’s death devastated her,” he says. “I found it patently unfair that life would do that to her. From that point forward, I vowed that I would spend the rest of my life trying to make her life better, trying to impose myself on the world to fix everything that I could…for her. So, I began finding jobs that would contribute to our family finances. Our situation had become more difficult with my father unable to work. But we stuck together and figured it out. My siblings became paternal figures; we’re all survivors.”

At his school in Brownsville, De Leon was an English as a Second Language (ESL) student. He was interested in his school’s spelling bee competition, but ESL students were not allowed to participate. De Leon negotiated with his school principal to let him borrow the spelling bee guide so that he could study the words. “I still have a great relationship with my principal and spelling coach. They’ve been cheering me on for decades, and I’m grateful to them for seeing in me a glimmer of talent early on.”

With his father’s help, De Leon studied a 400,000-word dictionary, cover to cover, and he began to see cultural, historic, and linguistic patterns in the words. “I worked to uncover the full depth of each word. I guess my mental algorithm trained on these words and concepts early on.”

He won the school competition and then won the regional contest in South Texas. At the time, Cameron County, which he represented, was officially the poorest county in the United States. De Leon went to the national spelling bee in Washington, D.C., and while he did not win the top prize, he still earned $10,000 for his participation. “Unfortunately, my father did not live to see me make it to the national contest,” he says. “He died a month before I attended the national spelling bee, but his impact to push me, to process history and words, would help me forever.”

De Leon’s experiences in regional and national spelling bees exposed him to peers from high-achieving school districts. He listened to conversations about higher education, and it began to inspire him to pursue his own American Dream.

“I think the idea of social mobility in the United States is the whole ball game; it’s the core of American exceptionalism,” he says. “When I travel around the world today, nobody values a bootstrap story the way Americans do. In India, Latin America, or Europe, being born into a lower socioeconomic rung is seen as a scarlet letter. In the United States, we celebrate it more than we celebrate anything else—because as Americans we’re talent purists, we believe talent is what drives outcomes. That’s why we innovate more, why we build more, and why we prosper more than any other society in history.”

By the time De Leon was in high school, he had received a scholarship to attend a private school in Brownsville, where he lived with an uncle. Following the North American Free Trade Agreement, there was a great deal of business development, and De Leon—now age 15—put his bilingual skills to good use acting as a translator for American real estate developers. This experience would become the foundation for his entrepreneurial journey later. For several clients, he negotiated small ownership stakes in the properties in lieu of his translation fees. “I made good money in high school and I was completely self- sufficient,” he says. “After that, my family never wanted for much again.”

When it came time to consider college, De Leon applied for every scholarship he could find. He was named a Coca-Cola Scholar as well as a Hoover Foundation Scholar, which enabled him to attend Harvard University. He sought to flesh out his street-level understanding of human behavior with academic pursuits that underscored evolutionary biology, behavioral economics, and comparative governing systems. He graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2001, taking with him a foundational philosophy around organizational principles and free markets that would govern his life’s pursuits.

De Leon’s first job out of school was as an analyst with Goldman Sachs in New York. However, it didn’t take long to realize that this job didn’t allow him to fully use his creativity and problem-solving skills. “I wasn’t a very good employee. I wanted to build things, but was only 24, so, after a modicum of civil disobedience, I was asked to pursue other endeavors. Essentially, I was let go.”

In 2006, he founded Leon Capital Group, a holding company that now oversees 12 independently-managed subsidiaries in three divisions: real estate, financial services, and healthcare. Today, Leon’s subsidiaries and externally managed companies encompass 4,000 employees and provide housing, healthcare, and other essential services to more than 6 million Americans daily.

De Leon believes that navigating varying business environments and constantly pivoting and adapting to different contexts, as he had done in his formative years, became the driving philosophy for every one of the businesses he has founded. “Everything, always, is changing, or it dies. Early adversity is a blessing; it trains you to see around corners.”

“When I launched my business at the young age of 26,” De Leon says, “I had about $100,000 of savings. I sought to compete with well-capitalized incumbents in the real estate development field, which without capital was a challenge. But necessity is the mother of invention, so we designed strategies to do things that others could not do. The invisible hand of capitalism rewards those whose ideas provide value to society.”

In an effort to always remember where he started, the De Leon Family Foundation focuses its support on education in south Texas and northern Mexico and also works to expand access to healthcare. The De Leon Scholars program awards scholarships to 10 students annually across the state of Texas, who endeavor to improve their communities.

Looking back over his life, De Leon realizes that part of his success comes from never allowing himself to be a victim of his circumstances. “Your life has many different dimensions,” he says, “and there are endless permutations to every set of circumstances. I found, however, that there is always a solution to a problem, but you have to be willing to fight for your place in the world. My mother is a great example of what it takes to overcome challenges. Being tough and resilient, I think that’s better than being anything else.”

When giving advice to young people who have encountered difficult challenges, De Leon says, “Most people try to move away from fear, but you should cultivate it, organize it, and leverage it. That’s how survival works.”

Even though De Leon has reached the heights of financial success, for him, the idea of success is more personal. “If I have given my family a foundation upon which to build for subsequent generations, and there is much love as the glue to keep us all together, then I see that as one way to think about success.”

Proud and humbled by his Horatio Alger Award, De Leon says, “Being born in the United States has been the greatest gift that a person can receive. I’ve been acutely aware of and grateful for the extraordinary opportunity this country provides. A country with a superior operating system that prompts upward social mobility unlike any other system in the history of humanity. A country that allows you to dream with no limitations. Simply put, no other country unlocks human potential the way the United States does.

“The Horatio Alger Association exalts the American Dream as the bedrock of our innovation, productive output, and our deserved economic prosperity. I am honored to be an emissary for this message and hope that I can passionately communicate the vastness of opportunity that exists in this country to Americans of all walks of life.”