PEORIA MAGAZINE October 2022

S P O T L I G H T

‘THE EPITOME OF THE AMERICAN

how to read or write” but was smart and selfless and “dedicated her life to raising 11 kids.” His father, the self-made business man with a calculator in his head, did well financially by local standards but recognized that themost important gift he could leave his children was an education. Today, all 11 children – Osman has eight brothers and two sisters, split between America and overseas – brag a college diploma in architecture, engineering, medicine or business, despite growing up in a Third World country where books could be hard to come by. “Without himpushing us, we wouldn’t bewherewe are as a family,” saidOsman, who mastered English by watching American soap operas and westerns. “It was all about ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’ Clint Eastwood and all that. I was fascinated with it.” DREAM’ Omer Osman has worked his way up the ranks to become Illinois’ barrier-breaking transportation secretary BY MIKE BAILEY PHOTOS BY MIKE BAILEY

S o what do you get when you cross Sudanese pride with a Midwestern humility and work ethic? Why, you get Illinois’ 13th transporta tion secretary, that’s what, as well as the first Peorian to occupy that position, the first person of color, and just the third IDOT lifer to rise to the top. In short, you get Omer Osman, 58, who should be a familiar name in central Illinois, as an engineer who spent most of his career working out of the Peo ria office of the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), with his finger prints on many of the most significant projects hereabouts since the 1990s. Today, he’s the top transportation official in a state with one of the largest, most diverse, most complex infrastructure networks in America, overseeing an annual operating budget

of some $3.8 billion, a capital budget topping $27 billion, and thework of some 5,000 employees. The ascendance has been impressive and the journey long for Osman – almost 6,800 miles, in fact. WHERE IT ALL STARTED Omer Osman was the fourth of 11 children born to Zumrawi and Fatima Osman in Kerma, Sudan, the area that gave rise to the Nubian Empire and the “Black Pharaohs” whose 25th dynasty ruled Egypt for nearly a century. He is a proud descendant of that history and tradition, though his own origins were humble enough. His father, Zumrawi, attended school through fourth grade, when he quit to helpOsman’s grandfather start a grocery innorthernSudan, muchneededby their village. Hismother, Fatima, “didn’t know

26 OCTOBER 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE