Wendy Lynn DuBoe

Wendy DuBoe is a seasoned executive who has more than thirty years of transformative, domestic, and international leadership experience in the non-profit and for-profit arenas. Under her leadership, she and her teams have designed innovative strategies, operated complex organizations, transformed business models, led people through change and built a multitude of sustainable partnerships and collaborations. Her creative, results-driven, optimistic, and encouraging leadership style has put several iconic organizations onto new pathways.

Wendy is dedicated to advancing social justice, nonviolence, and humanitarian causes. She has worked on these issues through NGOs, business, and philanthropy, and has been successful in uniting opposing sides toward consensus and more reasonable and constructive public policies. She is passionate about innovation and creating new initiatives.

For six years, Wendy served as President & CEO of United Way of Metro Chicago (UWMC) – the largest private funder of human services in Illinois and a major franchise of United Way Worldwide, one of the largest non-profits in the world. In this role, Wendy worked with staff, volunteers, donors, civic leaders, community leaders and government to modernize the organization and maximize the impact of its roughly $55M raised annually. Prior to that, she led the organization as the interim CEO and held the positions of Chief Operating Officer, Chief Community Investment Officer, and Chief Strategy & Integration Officer.

Wendy reinvented UWMC’s community investment approach and nearly all aspects of its business and operating model. For the first time in the organization’s history, she developed and implemented a 10-year regional impact plan Live United 2020 focused on targeted Education, Income, Health, and Safety solutions – the building blocks for thriving people and communities – in 60 under-served metropolitan
areas. Resources reached more than 1.6 million people annually and superseded the plan’s measurable objectives four years early.

To deepen impact and address the complex social challenges in Chicagoland communities, Wendy blueprinted and operationalized United Way Neighborhood Networks, a new coordinated service delivery model in ten underserved neighborhoods. The model leverages financial investment, coordinated planning, capacity building and in-kind resources to empower community coalitions to guide strategies, programs, and metrics in unison. The model was recognized as a promising practice by the Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Illinois’ Future and has raised more than $25M to date.

With these new approaches, and notwithstanding a challenging operating environment, Wendy was able to raise and diversify the top line. She also led an effort to significantly reduce pension fund liability and launched UWMC’s first state-wide public policy agenda and legislative advocacy efforts. Wendy joined UWMC in 2003 and played a pivotal role in the merger of fifty-four local affiliates into one metropolitan system. She and her team developed the org-wide strategy, designed the consolidation, established the operating policies, unified staff and volunteers, integrated investments and oversaw the operations.

Prior to joining UWMC, Wendy led the Aspen Institute’s internationally acclaimed Seminars Program as its Vice President, where she oversaw content, operations, and sales and marketing for the keystone leadership program. Her work at the Aspen Institute deepened her previous international educational programming experience gained in her role as Program Officer at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Before joining mission-driven organizations, Wendy had a dynamic career in the private sector, having served in leadership roles for both FleishmanHillard and Ameritech International. Wendy was the Vice President of Investor Relations for FleishmanHillard, managing several of the Chicago office’s largest clients, overseeing teams of public relations and investor relations specialists, crafting strategic marketing communications plans, handling merger & acquisition announcements and writing earnings statements.

Prior to her international educational programming and investor relations experiences, Wendy worked in the international telecommunications industry serving as Director of Business Development for Ameritech International. Wendy joined Ameritech when the industry became less regulated, and the company was starting to invest overseas. She played a leadership role in architecting the strategy and business development for the European market; managed investment projects; played pivotal roles in external relations, investor relations and public policy and opened European offices. Ultimately, Ameritech became the largest U.S. service investor in Europe by participating in several telecom privations and purchasing cellular and data businesses across the continent.

Wendy graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Economics & Psychology. She earned her M.A. in Economics & International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Bologna Center and in Washington, DC as well as a General Course Degree in Economics & Psychology from the London School of Economics & Political Science. She is currently pursuing a Leadership & Society Fellowship at the University of Chicago to determine the best approaches to stimulate innovation and philanthropic investment in the field of violence reduction.

Wendy has served as Chair of the Board of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago and recently cofounded a startup violence reduction accountability organization now based at The Center on Public Safety and Justice with NORC at the University of Chicago. She is a Member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, The Chicago Network, the Advisory Board of Loyola University’s Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise & Responsibility, and the Cook County Commission on Social Innovation where she Co-Chairs a Public Safety Taskforce. Wendy was a Member of Rahm Emanuel’s Transition Team and a McCormick Foundation Scholarship Recipient for the Corporate Leadership Center’s CEO Perspectives Program.

She has lectured at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business. She was recognized as the Chapman Executive in Residence at Carthage College’s A.W. Clausen Center for World Business. Wendy has collaborated on health and human services and philanthropy publications, telecommunications and economic development policy papers, and counterterrorism papers.

She loves art and design, jewelry making, history, languages, writing, travel, and adventure, and is conversant in Italian.