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[[File<div>'''Gabriel Conners'''</div>'''Serving as UIF Since:GabrielConners.jpg|thumb|GabrielConners'''&nbsp;Spring 2015<br/>'''School:&nbsp;'''Illinois Institute of Technology<br/>'''What he does now:'''&nbsp;Citizen of Creative Liberation, Earth<br/>'''What that means:'''&nbsp;He develops a community’s ability to self-design by awakening and nurturing individual and group creativity.jpg]]

I am Gabriel Conners, a Unversity Innovation Fellow from the Spring 2015 cohort and a student of “creativity as currency[[File:Gabe 2018.” With a passion to empower the epic in everyone, I attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, nestled in the south of Chicago’s urban core. In 2009, I took a five-year hiatus from the rigors of academia to explore a nagging reality that I can best sum up as “why do people live apathetic and uninspired lives?” I came to see that the most satisfied people were either pursuing a passion or at peace with life(or both!)jpeg|thumb|right|Gabe 2018.jpeg]]

This journey has led me to '''Contact him about:'''&nbsp;creative writing, coffee shops, culture and community development, policy analysis, program design and evaluation, divergent thoughts '''Email:&nbsp;'''G@hawk.iit.edu<br/>'''Phone:&nbsp;'''(312) 434-9260 &nbsp; Gabe is a University Innovation Fellow, graduating in the summer of 2018 from Illinois Institute of Technology. With backgrounds in coffee, guest engagement, peer leadership, and now social and economic development policy, he is a renaissance man of community building. &nbsp; When he arrived at Illinois Techin 2014, where I study Social he was pursuing a thesis of “Creativity as Currency,” convinced that the status quo economic structures at the turn of the 21^st century were going to need more relevant and Economic Development Policy accessible ways of generating and work with exchanging value. &nbsp; Over the next four years, Gabe operated as a change agent mandated by the University Innovation Fellows[http://universityinnovationfellows.org/manifesto/ UIF Manifesto], working with the IIT College of Human Sciences; Student Government, Center for Diversity and Inclusion; Residence and the office Greek Life; Office of Campus Life; Office of Student Access, Success, and Diversity Initiatives; President’s Student Advisory Council, Student Government Association, Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, Engineers Without Borders, and the Entrepreneurship Academy. Throughout these collaborations, he experimented in and developed deeper understandings of how relationship development and creative encouragement can be used to develop community. &nbsp; When he came in to Illinois Tech, he thought his challenge was to build resource networks to empower communities to sustainably develop themselves. He learned over time that he was making a host of assumptions, reforming and the culture problem reaches deeper: '''communities must first have the liberty to design themselves''', to discover their intent and bring it to life. &nbsp; This revelation has inspired Gabe’s latest personal and professional quest: to prototype a new (for him) manifestation of democracy and identity as grounded in the creative rights of people—wherein the creative heart of each person is acknowledged in equality and recognized as deserving of campus full opportunity to better nurture thrive in creative passionsexpression, building on the foundations of the [http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ Universal Declaration of Human Rights]. My life’s mission He sees one application as an improved model for civic education, where active citizenship involves spilling this type ensuring those in the community have the freedom and resources to design. &nbsp; When he isn’t musing on social, economic, and political system reconfigurations, you can find Gabe sauntering among the trees and high-rises of culture shift into surrounding communitiesChicago’s urban landscape, so that education institutions drive creative revolutions taking moments to ask strangers “what they are about in their neighborhoodslife.” He has a passion for local-roasted espresso, the communal spaces of coffee shops, and good climbing trees. He’ll go for Vivaldi, Mozart, and most musical playlists—Hamilton and Les Misérables FTW.