Chris Her-Xiong has shaped education and inspired Hmong children in Milwaukee over her 30 years with Milwaukee Public Schools, as a teacher, principal and now executive director of the Hmong American Peace Academy. Her early years were carefree and spent on a farm in Laos, but her family fled the communists after the end of the Vietnam War and ended up hungry and scrounging for food in a refugee camp in Thailand. After her family immigrated to the U.S., she found school in Iowa to be a whole new experience. She learned to hold a pencil at age 11. As she grew up, she struggled with the pressure to follow Hmong traditions, including a focus on becoming a wife and homemaker. There was a desire for other paths, and college opened her up to new avenues. When she was hired by MPS in 1990, she was its first Hmong bilingual teacher. She watched as her Hmong students faced the same identity crisis that she had gone through. Her desire for them to be able to embrace their culture, while also having many choices in life, is what led her to found the Hmong American Peace Academy, an MPS charter school and the first Hmong charter school in Wisconsin. It celebrates Hmong heritage, rigorous academics  and a community peace program. It began with 200 students in 2004 and now has about 1,800 scholars and a 100% college acceptance rate. Chris was honored last year by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation for her inspirational leadership and was a Milwaukee Business Journal 2016 Woman of Influence. She also was named to incoming Gov. Tony Evers’ Personnel Advisory Council to help refer potential candidates for key state positions.