Meet Dr. Oby Nwabuzor

Dr. Oby Nwabuzor, DrPH, MBA, is a first-generation Nigerian American leader whose career spans strategy, public health, community investment, and real estate development. Over the past decade, she has led complex, cross-sector initiatives that bring together strategy, investment, partnerships, and execution to advance organizational and community priorities.

Her career includes leadership across healthcare, financial services, and the nonprofit sector, with experience leading multi-state strategy, shaping policy and community investment initiatives, building cross-sector partnerships, and translating complex priorities into execution. Across this work, Dr. Oby has helped shape strategy and policy for multi-million-dollar place-based investment initiatives and has helped secure more than $1.7 million in community investment to expand SNAP access, support healthy-food retail, and enhance neighborhood walkability across Wisconsin.

Dr. Oby is also Founder of Envision Growth, a public health-driven real estate development firm building healthy people and communities. She has led more than $4 million in real estate development, with experience spanning early-stage commercial projects, single-family revitalization, and affordable and workforce homeownership. Her development work includes the Early Childhood Educators Homeownership Initiative, an award-winning homeownership model for early childhood educators. Envision Growth was part of the developer group behind the initiative, recipient of the 2026 Milwaukee Awards for Neighborhood Development Innovation Husch Blackwell Building Blocks Award.

Her work is informed by both professional practice and research. Dr. Oby’s doctoral research examined the relationship between investment patterns, gentrification, displacement, and racial mortality disparities in the United States, extending a body of work focused on the relationship between investment, place, opportunity, and health.

Dr. Oby serves on the Wisconsin Public Health Council and the City of Milwaukee Neighborhood Improvement Development Corporation Board and serves as Board Secretary of Malaika Early Learning Center. She was nationally recognized as a 2026 National Minority Quality Forum 40 Under 40 Leader in Health, with additional recognition from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee Business Journal, Wisconsin Law Journal, UNCF, and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dr. Oby holds a Doctor of Public Health from the Medical College of Wisconsin, an MBA from Cardinal Stritch University, and a bachelor’s degree in Communication from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her professional development includes the Cornell University Commercial Real Estate Certificate, Marquette ACRE Program, Harvard Business School Young American Leaders Program, and Urban Land Institute Health Leaders Network.

More than any title or role, Dr. Oby sees leadership as a responsibility to build, serve, and create opportunity for others. Grounded in her Nigerian heritage and a legacy of land stewardship and generational leadership, she carries that sense of responsibility across the institutions, communities, and development work she helps shape.