Who he is
Carlos Giraldo came to Philadelphia from Colombia. Carlos grew up in and around Hunting Park, Olney, and Lawncrest, and today he lives and works in Northeast Philadelphia. He started out as a network administrator — first at Panasonic, then at an accounting firm — before qualifying at the Greater Philadelphia Realty School in 2003 and moving into real estate.
He sold more than $10 million in his first year with Re/Max, earned his broker's licence in 2007 through the American Real Estate Institute, and today is Broker of Record for Giraldo Real Estate Group, working out of 6443 Rising Sun Avenue, Suite 117 in Northeast Philadelphia. He ranks among the top 5% of agents in the Greater Philadelphia area, and in 2014 he completed the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme.
He is a father of four and coaches soccer.
What he brings to Council
Two decades of development, renovation and property management is an unusual background for a Council candidate, and a directly relevant one. Housing costs, vacant property, the permitting process and what it actually takes to keep a small business open are not abstractions to him — they are the work he has done every day since 2003.
Running a brokerage also means meeting the city where people actually live in it: buyers priced out of the blocks they grew up on, longtime owners facing repairs they cannot afford, and small business owners who spend more time on paperwork than on customers.
How he will govern
An at-large Council office under Carlos Giraldo will publish its constituent service numbers, hold office hours in every section of the city rather than only downtown, and put major zoning and development decisions in front of neighbors before they are settled, not after.
He is running in the Democratic primary on May 18, 2027. In Philadelphia, the primary usually decides the seat — which is exactly why it is worth showing up for.
What an at-large seat is
Philadelphia City Council has seventeen members: ten elected by district and seven elected at-large by the entire city. An at-large member represents every neighborhood in Philadelphia, from the Far Northeast to Southwest, and answers to all of them rather than to one district's boundaries.
In the primary, each voter may cast up to five at-large votes, and each party nominates five candidates. So this is not a question of choosing between Carlos and someone else — he is asking for one of your five.