The Lightbulb Moment That Lit a Career in Public Finance: The 2025 CC DuBois Alumni Service Award Winner Tells Her Story

The career “lightbulb moment” for Ashlee Gabrysch, AB'07, MPP’13, came at an unlikely place: the Municipal CFO Forum.

The forum, hosted by the Harris School of Public Policy and the City of Chicago, brought together chief financial officers from across the United States. These forums were likely frequent spots for “aha” moments for a Harris student planning a future in finance. But Gabrysch’s career plans had always felt less by-the-numbers and more magic carpet ride.

She’s taught high school, thought about law school, considered starting a food truck business (serving the breakfast tacos that as a transplanted Texan she longed for), weighed enrolling in the Booth School of Business, and majored in Interdisciplinary Slavic Studies as a University of Chicago undergrad (she’s a self-described “proselytizer of Polish poetry”). And then, while at Harris Public Policy, she ended up at the UChicago Gleacher Center for that forum, attending some of the many sessions open to students.

“There was this lightbulb moment for me when I realized—as someone who is interested in everything and who wants to learn about everything—that public finance was the door that opened everything up to me through the finance lens,” Gabrysch recalled.

Today, she works for Fitch Ratings as the Midwest region manager for local government ratings (and yes, that’s her quoted in the Chicago Tribune about city budget wrangling and Bears stadium plans).

She also serves as the global chair of the Fitch Women’s Network, which has more than 1,000 members worldwide across all global offices and is vice president of Chicago Women in Public Finance.

Gabrysch also finds time to keep strong ties to Harris, devoting her energy to the school in myriad ways.

In recognition of that devotion, Gabrysch was honored with the 2025 CC Dubois Alumni Service Award. The award, named for the late Cynthia “CC” DuBois, MPP’10, recognizes a graduate who has “demonstrated a strong commitment to the school through their service and work to enhance the life of students, fellow alumni, and the welfare of the school.” 

Gabrysch’s commitments to Harris include mentoring, recruiting, working with student groups, and serving on panels. She volunteers to help student teams vying in the Harris Policy Innovation Challenge. And she joined a group of Harris students and Professor Justin Marlowe, who heads the Center for Municipal Finance, to start the student chapter of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. 

“I have derived tremendous benefit from giving back,” Gabrysch said. “And continuing to be connected to Harris has kept me grounded.”

“Honestly,” she added, “a lot of my giving back to Harris was me creating a community for myself post-Harris. I don't think I was quite prepared for how quickly a two-year master's program would be over....”

And thanks to that Harris community, every job she’s had since Harris had a Harris connection.

“That’s not to say that I didn't bring the requisite skills,” Gabrysch added, “but many of the jobs weren't even publicly posted. They were word of mouth. That sort of benefit has made me very keen to do the same for other Harris alumni.”

Gabrysch has hired interns and staff members from Harris.

“I love to understand what they learned and see how they think, and I know that I can make big asks of them and that they will run with them. They care about the issue and want to do a good job,” she said. “As someone who's often a hiring manager, when you find a source for people like that, you want to continuously go back to find more people of that ilk.”

For Fitch, Gabrysch rates the debt of local governments throughout the Midwest, managing a team of analysts and with a portfolio of credits herself. Before Fitch, she worked for the State of Illinois and Cook County, and spent a year at the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog nonprofit. In 2023, she was named a Rising Star by The Bond Buyer.

Outside of work—and all that volunteering for Harris—Gabrysch throws “huge dinner parties” and even had an underground restaurant when she lived in North Kenwood (she’s now a North Sider). She said she loves to cook. 

“Before I went to Harris, I thought maybe I would have a breakfast taco truck,” she said. “There are not breakfast tacos in Chicago, not San Antonio-esque breakfast tacos. But given how narrow margins are in food service, I'm very glad I did not go that route.”

So, too are all the current and would-be Harris students she comes into contact with.

“I meet with Harris public finance students all the time unofficially,” she said. “I typically have coffee with them, and I connect them to other people within the public finance world because I think that world needs more of the deep and thoughtful people like those at Harris, especially in this time of artificial intelligence, snap decision-making, and shallowness of thought rather than depth.”

She also meets with students still just considering Harris, encouraging them to consider all of the places a Harris degree can take them.

“My elevator pitch to recruits is a very non-traditional elevator pitch because I am very forthright and I say, ‘Hey, I showed up not knowing what I would do with this degree,’” she said. 

“There are some people who know exactly what they want to do, but that wasn't my path,” Gabrysch said. “Mine has been very circuitous and my elevator pitch is me providing my story, the unvarnished version of my journey.”