Yusuf Dahl has no problem speaking candidly about his life, whether he's talking about the good parts, like his daughter, Chloee, or the more difficult parts, like the time he spent behind bars as a teenager and young man in his native Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He owns all of it. Perhaps that's because every success and every setback have helped to shape the educator, entrepreneur, father and man he is today.
Of course, Dahl had no way of knowing there would be a second act for him when he was coming of age in Milwaukee in the 1990s, traveling down the poverty-to-prison pathway that unfortunately was trodden by many young Black men before him. Dahl says his community had one of the highest rates of Black incarceration in the United States; half of all Black men were either behind bars or out on parole by the time they reached the age of 30. His older brother became part of that statistic, and Dahl later followed at the age of 14 when he was sent to juvenile detention on a robbery charge. “It was very much a prison, just for younger people,” he says. His downward spiral was inevitable in many ways; Dahl says his mother struggled with addiction and chemical dependency issues, and his neighborhood was lacking in positive male role models. “I had clearly fallen in with the bad crowd,” he says. “I wasn't a bad person. I was just making bad decisions.”
Unfortunately, those bad decisions continued after his time in juvenile detention ended. “My master plan was to sell drugs as a result of it,” recalls Dahl. He had served as a rapt audience as another young man at the facility had extolled the benefits of peddling illegal drugs on the outside—money, power, prestige. “I'm thinking, ‘OK, this guy is providing a service that people want to pay for.'” Dahl says he viewed getting involved with the drug business as a way he could contribute to his family. Within a year of his release from juvenile detention he was operating a network of drug houses in Milwaukee. Some of his mother's friends were his first customers.
Dahl was arrested again in 1998 at the age of 18, and this time he was an adult in the eyes of the law, so there was no juvenile detention. Dahl was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison, and ultimately would serve about half of that. But surprisingly, he has no bitterness about the turn of events that again landed him at square one. “I was fortunate to be arrested and sentenced to prison,” he says. “I could have been killed in the streets.”
It was also during this time that Dahl decided something had to give; he had to change his ways. While he was behind bars, Dahl began to teach himself computer skills and software development. He was able to earn a certification from Microsoft that enabled him to land his first post-prison job—no easy feat for a young Black man with a criminal record. Then, another personal victory: he purchased his own home—the first in his immediate family to do so. But then the foreclosure crisis hit, and his neighborhood in Milwaukee was hit particularly hard. Dahl says he watched his block deteriorate around him. He had a choice to make: step up and accept a new challenge, or cut his losses and get out. Dahl picked the former. “It was just a downward spiral of blight. If I didn't take a stand for my community, who the hell was going to?” he says.
He began to purchase properties that needed more than a little TLC, starting with the one next door to his own home. He immersed himself in DIY books and YouTube videos to learn everything he could about fixing up homes. In 2008, he founded his own affordable housing development and management company, Milwaukee Metro Management. Within five years he had more than 200 properties within his portfolio. “It was never my master plan to become a landlord,” Dahl says. “It was just one of these things that happened.” He also took a deeper interest in policy issues and was elected president of the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin, one of the largest such groups in the state. Years of tenacity, grit and hard work were opening up new opportunities; he was no longer scraping to get by or struggling to get his foot in the door—he was the guy building the doorway. “I was in a position to do what I wanted to do, as opposed to what I had to do,” Dahl says.
And the next thing Dahl wanted to do was beef up his academic credentials to have a greater impact on the world around him. By that time, he already had a bachelor's degree in information technology from Ottawa University, and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Lubar School of Business under his belt. Next stop? The Ivy League. Dahl was awarded a scholarship to attend graduate school at Princeton University. He and his daughter packed up and headed to the East Coast in the summer of 2015. Dahl says adapting to life in a new zip code was a challenge, compounded by the demands of being a single dad and a student in a tough program at a prestigious university. “It was the first time I was in an environment where it wasn't an issue of working harder,” he explains. “I was never groomed to be a student.” But Dahl stuck with it, earning his master's degree in public policy analysis in 2017.
While teaching social entrepreneurship at Princeton, he met someone who told him about an opportunity to work with Lafayette College's Dyer Center, which encourages students to think outside the box and extend their creativity beyond the classroom to change the community around them. “I knew I could be impactful in a short period of time,” says Dahl.
With that decision, Dahl would become the center's Executive Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and he and his daughter would become official Lehigh Valley residents. Dahl praises the Valley as a great place to raise a family. Chloee will be an eighth grader at Bethlehem's Moravian Academy in the fall, but Dahl says her education isn't confined to a classroom. “I've always thought the best way to teach anyone is by example,” he says. “She gets dragged along to a lot of different things.” Lately, that includes meetings and gatherings connected to Allentown's Real Estate Lab, which Dahl co-founded along with City Center Investment Corporation head J.B. Reilly. “We take you through the entire life cycle of a real estate transaction,” Dahl says. The 10-week program graduated its first “class” last year. It was a proud moment for Dahl, who of course understands the transformative possibilities of homeownership. “It's so satisfying to me,” he says. “I know firsthand the benefits that can come not only to you but to your kids. We're really proud of what we've done so far.”
He hopes to expand the program to other parts of the Lehigh Valley, such as Easton, where he serves on the mayor's Affordable Housing Task Force, or Bethlehem. It's more forward momentum for a man who doesn't spend much time fretting over mistakes made in the past. Dahl says he has no regrets. “I'm a true believer that things happen as they're supposed to,” he says. “If you spend too much time [thinking about regrets], it takes away from what you can and will do.”
