Meet Our Team

Public Wise brings together an experienced group of individuals from the public sector, research and organizing.

Christina Baal-Owens

Leadership Team

Executive Director

@CBaal
A photo of Christina Baal-Owens, Executive Director, Public Wise

Christina brings nearly two decades of experience in electoral and legislative campaigns, advocacy, government, and non-profit management. A social worker by trade who started her career in the labor and immigrants’ rights movements, she views social change work through the lens of the direct impact and accessibility of enacted policies on communities.

Christina first developed a passion for making voting accessible to marginalized communities as Director of Civic Engagement at the New York Immigration Coalition where she ran one of the largest voter registration programs for newly naturalized immigrants in the country and led a statewide immigrant voter table. Following her time at NYIC, Christina served in the political departments of two major labor unions, RWDSU where she was Deputy Political Director and 32BJ SEIU, where she was the State Legislative Coordinator. Directly prior to coming on to Public Wise, she was the Assistant Comptroller for Community Affairs at the NYS Comptroller’s office.

Christina also brings a wealth of experience running campaigns and IEs at the city, state, and federal levels. Most notably, she was the NYS Organizing Director for Hillary for America in 2016 where she ran a program that generated voter contacts in all 50 states.