Executive Team

Office of the President & CEO

Paul Schmitz, CEO

Paul Schmitz founded Public Allies Milwaukee in 1993, and has served as the national CEO of Public Allies since 2000. Public Allies’ mission is to advance new leadership to strengthen communities, nonprofits, and civic participation. Since 1992, Public Allies has supported more than 2,800 diverse young leaders in 18 communities across the country to turn their passion to make a difference into a career in community and public service, and promoted leadership approaches that engage the next generation and diverse communities.

Paul writes and speaks often on topics of national service, civic engagement, community building, diversity, nonprofit workforce development, and social entrepreneurship. Paul currently serves as Chair of the Nonprofit Workforce Coalition, Co-chair of Voices for National Service, a board member of Our Good Works, a blogger on leadership for The Washington Post, and a faculty member of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. As a private volunteer, Paul co-chaired the Obama campaign’s civic engagement policy group and was a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Team. Paul graduated phi beta kappa from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1994 with a degree in political science, and received UWM's “Graduate of the Last Decade” alumni award. He was also a Next Generation Leadership Fellow with the Rockefeller Foundation. He lives with his three children, Maxwell, Maya and Olivia, in Milwaukee. 

Cris Ros Dukler, COO

Cris to Public Allies brings more than 20 years experience of executive leadership in the nonprofit, public and private sectors. Cris is a reformer who led state regulatory departments in Texas and Wisconsin, and served as COO of a regional nonprofit overseeing an $11 million budget and 400 employees working to improve foster care services in two states. She was a partner in a venture that invented “electronic benefit transfer cards” for distributing government benefits such as food stamps, a change that prevented fraud and enhanced the dignity of users. After the business was sold, Cris joined UPC Health Network, where she directed an $80 million business employing 350 workers in Wisconsin and Illinois. She started a respiratory therapy operation in Illinois that became the most profitable in its company. Cris was an advisory board member of Scholastic, Inc.; has served as a vice chair of Wisconsin Aids Resource Center of Wisconsin, was an advisory board member of Public Allies Milwaukee, and has held several other volunteer roles. A cum laude graduate of the Philippine Normal College in Manila, Cris has a master's in Educational Psychology from the University of Hawaii.