Loretta Kryshak Nominated for 2026 Ozaukee Impact Awards Emerging Nonprofit Leader of the Year
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OZAUKEE COUNTY, Wis. — Loretta Kryshak, Executive Director of Rebel Reform and internationally recognized photographer, has been nominated for the 2026 Ozaukee Impact Awards in the category of Emerging Nonprofit Leader of the Year.
Presented by the Ozaukee Nonprofit Center and Bank Five Nine, the Ozaukee Impact Awards recognize individuals, organizations, and businesses that have demonstrated exceptional commitment to serving the community and improving the lives of others throughout Ozaukee County.
Kryshak's nomination reflects her leadership, vision, and dedication to creating meaningful change through her work with Rebel Reform. Under her guidance, the organization has expanded its community outreach efforts, strengthened partnerships with local nonprofits, and supported initiatives that address critical needs throughout southeastern Wisconsin.
“Being nominated for the Emerging Nonprofit Leader of the Year Award is both humbling and inspiring,” said Kryshak. “This recognition reflects the incredible work of the volunteers, partners, supporters, and organizations we collaborate with every day. Together, we are making a positive impact in the lives of people who need it most.”
As Executive Director of Rebel Reform, Kryshak has helped lead numerous community initiatives focused on humanitarian outreach, charitable giving, volunteer engagement, and support for organizations serving vulnerable populations. Her leadership has helped build stronger connections between businesses, nonprofits, and community members who share a commitment to helping others.
The Ozaukee Impact Awards recognize excellence in community service through several categories, including Nonprofit of the Year, Community Stewardship of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, Community Collaboration of the Year, and the Legacy Award.
Award recipients will be announced during the Ozaukee Impact Awards celebration on July 23, 2026.
For Kryshak, the nomination represents more than personal recognition—it highlights the power of collaboration and the collective impact that can be achieved when people come together to serve their communities.
“Every act of kindness creates a ripple effect,” Kryshak said. “I am grateful to be part of a community that continually steps up to support one another and create opportunities for positive change.”
About Loretta Kryshak
Loretta Kryshak is an internationally recognized photographer, humanitarian, and Executive Director of Rebel Reform. Through her leadership and advocacy work, she is committed to strengthening communities, supporting charitable initiatives, and inspiring meaningful change through service and storytelling.
About Rebel Reform
Rebel Reform is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating positive change through community engagement, charitable outreach, and partnerships that support individuals and families in need. The organization works alongside local nonprofits, businesses, and volunteers to make a lasting impact throughout Wisconsin communities.
Media Contact:
Loretta Kryshak
Website: lorettakryshak.com
Website: rebelreform.org
Honored to Be Nominated for the 2026 Ozaukee Impact Awards Emerging Nonprofit Leader of the Year
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“I am honored and deeply grateful to share that I have been nominated for the 2026 Ozaukee Impact Awards Emerging Nonprofit Leader of the Year.”
-Loretta Kryshak
Presented by the Ozaukee Nonprofit Center and Bank Five Nine, the Ozaukee Impact Awards celebrate individuals, organizations, businesses, and volunteers who have made a meaningful difference in the lives of others through service, leadership, and community engagement.
To be recognized by members of the community I care so deeply about is incredibly humbling.
While this nomination bears my name, it truly represents the collective efforts of the many people who work tirelessly to make a positive impact every day. Through my role as Executive Director of Rebel Reform, I have had the privilege of working alongside remarkable volunteers, nonprofit leaders, community partners, donors, and advocates who continually demonstrate what can be accomplished when people come together for a common purpose.
Over the past year, I have witnessed firsthand the generosity and compassion that exist throughout Ozaukee County and southeastern Wisconsin. From supporting local charitable organizations to helping create opportunities for individuals and families facing difficult circumstances, our community consistently proves that meaningful change happens when people are willing to serve others.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is seeing the ripple effect that kindness can create. A single act of generosity often inspires another, and those moments can transform communities in ways that extend far beyond what we initially imagine.
This nomination also reflects the mission that drives everything I do, both professionally and personally. Whether through photography, storytelling, nonprofit leadership, or community outreach, I believe that every person deserves to feel seen, valued, and supported. My goal has always been to use my platform and experiences to help connect people, raise awareness, and encourage action that creates lasting positive change.
I would like to sincerely thank the individual who nominated me for this recognition. Your confidence and support mean more than words can express.
Most importantly, I want to thank every volunteer, supporter, donor, board member, community partner, and friend who has joined us in our mission. This nomination belongs to all of you as much as it belongs to me.
The Ozaukee Impact Awards ceremony will take place on July 23, 2026, and I am honored simply to be included among so many inspiring individuals and organizations making a difference throughout our community.
No matter the outcome, I remain committed to continuing the work that matters most: helping others, strengthening communities, and creating opportunities for positive change.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
With gratitude,
Loretta Kryshak
Executive Director, Rebel Reform
What Africa Taught Loretta Kryshak About Humanity, Travel, and Seeing the World Differently
There are places in the world that change the way you think, and then there are places that change the way you see.
For Loretta Kryshak, Africa became both.
Long before she was known for her humanitarian leadership through Rebel Reform or her award-winning photography featured on LorettaKryshak.com, Loretta believed travel had the power to expand a person’s understanding of the world. But visiting Africa transformed that belief into something much deeper: an understanding that travel is not about escape. It is about perspective.
As someone who has traveled to all seven continents, Loretta has photographed glaciers in Antarctica, crowded city streets in Southeast Asia, and remote landscapes few people ever experience. Yet Africa left a distinct impression on her, not simply because of its wildlife or scenery, but because of the people she encountered and the lessons those experiences carried home with her.
Why Loretta Kryshak Loves to Travel
For Loretta, travel has never been about checking destinations off a list. It has always been about understanding how people live, connect, survive, celebrate, and support one another across different cultures.
That philosophy is visible throughout her photography and humanitarian work. On her website, Loretta describes photography as a process of “looking past the familiar” and learning to see beyond the obvious.
Africa reinforced that mindset in ways she did not expect.
The experience challenged assumptions about happiness, success, and community. In many of the villages and communities she encountered, Loretta witnessed people with fewer material possessions than most Americans, yet with an extraordinary sense of resilience, generosity, and human connection.
She returned home with a renewed appreciation for the importance of community; something that would later continue shaping her work in Milwaukee through Rebel Reform’s outreach efforts.
The Power of Human Connection in Africa
One of the things Loretta often reflects on from her travels is how universal kindness can be.
Despite language barriers and cultural differences, she found moments of connection everywhere she went in Africa. Conversations did not always require perfect communication. Sometimes a smile, a shared meal, or simply showing respect was enough.
Those experiences became deeply influential in how she approaches both photography and philanthropy today.
In later interviews and essays, Loretta has written that travel taught her attention is the foundation of everything meaningful whether documenting a photograph, helping a community, or leading an organization.
Africa became one of the clearest examples of that lesson.
Rather than rushing through destinations, Loretta spent time observing daily life, listening to stories, and documenting moments that reflected humanity rather than stereotypes. The trip reminded her that the most meaningful travel experiences are often the quietest ones.
How Africa Influenced Loretta Kryshak’s Humanitarian Work
The Kryshak family’s travels, including volunteer work in Africa, helped shape the philanthropic philosophy behind Rebel Reform and many of the community initiatives Loretta leads today.
Seeing poverty firsthand in parts of Africa did not leave Loretta feeling hopeless. Instead, it strengthened her belief that local action matters.
That perspective carried into projects throughout southeastern Wisconsin, including:
helping underserved Milwaukee communities through Rebel Reform partnerships.
Travel gave Loretta a broader understanding of how interconnected communities really are. Problems may look different across continents, but compassion, dignity, and opportunity matter everywhere.
Photography, Africa, and Learning to Slow Down
Africa also influenced Loretta’s growth as a photographer.
The landscapes, wildlife, and light offered extraordinary photographic opportunities, but what stayed with her most were the human moments; everyday interactions, expressions, and environments that revealed authenticity rather than performance.
Her photography philosophy increasingly shifted away from simply capturing images and toward documenting emotion, atmosphere, and perspective.
As Loretta has written previously, “Sometimes the most important thing a photographer can do is wait.”
Africa taught her patience.
It taught her that not every meaningful experience happens on a schedule and that some of the most powerful images come from observation rather than interruption.
What Loretta Kryshak Wants People to Understand About Travel
In an era where social media often turns travel into performance, Loretta believes meaningful travel should still involve curiosity, humility, and openness.
Travel is not about proving you have been somewhere. It is about allowing a place to affect you.
For Loretta Kryshak, Africa became one of those places.
The experience deepened her understanding of humanity, strengthened her commitment to service, and reminded her why she values documenting the world through both photography and humanitarian work.
Today, those lessons continue to influence everything from her photography portfolio to her leadership with Rebel Reform and her ongoing community outreach efforts throughout Milwaukee and beyond.
Behind Rebel Reform: Loretta Kryshak’s Mission to Create Meaningful Change
For many people, photography is about capturing beautiful moments. For Loretta Kryshak, it has always been about something deeper; creating human connection, preserving stories, and inspiring meaningful change.
As an internationally recognized photographer and the Executive Director of Rebel Reform, Loretta has built a career that blends creativity, compassion, and advocacy. While her photography has taken her across the globe, her work through Rebel Reform reflects a mission much closer to home: helping communities, supporting people in need, and creating lasting impact through service and storytelling.
The Vision Behind Rebel Reform
Rebel Reform was created with a simple but powerful belief: real change begins when people feel seen, heard, and valued.
Under Loretta Kryshak’s leadership, the organization focuses on humanitarian outreach, community engagement, and initiatives that bring people together through empathy and action. The work is rooted in the understanding that every person has a story worth telling and every community deserves support.
For Loretta, leadership has never been about titles or recognition. It has always been about connection.
“Photography taught me to slow down and truly see people,” she explains. “That same mindset shapes the way I approach leadership and community work.”
That perspective has become a defining part of Rebel Reform’s mission.
Using Storytelling to Create Impact
One of the unique aspects of Rebel Reform is the role storytelling plays in its outreach efforts.
In today’s digital world, people are constantly overwhelmed with information. Statistics and headlines may grab attention for a moment, but personal stories are what create lasting emotional connection. Loretta’s background as a photographer has given her a distinct ability to recognize those moments of humanity that often go unnoticed.
Whether documenting communities, supporting charitable initiatives, or advocating for causes that matter, she believes storytelling can help bridge divides and inspire action.
Photography, in many ways, became the foundation for that philosophy.
Years spent photographing remote landscapes, humanitarian efforts, and candid human moments taught Loretta that some of the most meaningful experiences happen quietly. Those lessons continue to influence the way Rebel Reform communicates its mission and serves the community.
Leading With Creativity and Compassion
Creative leadership is not always associated with nonprofit work, but Loretta believes creativity is one of the most important tools a leader can possess.
The ability to think differently, connect emotionally, and communicate visually allows organizations to engage communities in a more authentic way. Through Rebel Reform, Loretta has worked to combine advocacy with creativity to help bring awareness to important causes while building stronger community relationships.
Empathy also plays a central role in her leadership style.
Rather than focusing solely on programs or outcomes, Loretta emphasizes the importance of listening to people’s experiences and understanding the human side of every issue. That approach has helped shape Rebel Reform into an organization centered on dignity, compassion, and meaningful connection.
The Challenges of Nonprofit Leadership
Like many nonprofit leaders, Loretta understands that creating meaningful change comes with challenges.
Community organizations often operate with limited resources while trying to address complex social issues. Balancing advocacy, outreach, fundraising, and long-term impact requires persistence and adaptability.
But for Loretta, the work remains deeply personal.
Her experiences as a photographer taught her that even small moments can leave a lasting impact. A single image can change perspective. A conversation can inspire hope. A community initiative can improve lives in ways that extend far beyond what people initially see.
That belief continues to drive her work with Rebel Reform today.
Why Human Connection Still Matters
In an increasingly fast-paced and digital world, Loretta believes authentic human connection has never been more important.
Much of today’s communication happens through screens, algorithms, and short attention spans. Rebel Reform aims to create something more personal; a reminder that compassion, service, and storytelling still matter.
Through both her photography and nonprofit leadership, Loretta Kryshak continues to focus on the same core mission: helping people feel connected to one another and inspired to make a difference.
Because behind every photograph, every community initiative, and every act of advocacy is ultimately the same goal, creating meaningful change through humanity itself.
Seven Continents Through the Lens: How World Travel Shaped Loretta Kryshak as a Photographer and Humanitarian
There is a photograph I took in Antartica that I return to often. No people, no color, no movement just a vast plane of ice stretching toward a horizon that seemed to belong to another world entirely. The light was coming from everywhere at once, flat and blue-white and completely unlike anything I had encountered before. I stood there for a long time before I raised my camera. Sometimes the most important thing a photographer can do is wait.
That moment, and hundreds like it across seven continents, is what has shaped me, not just as a photographer, but as a person who believes deeply in the power of paying attention. Over the years, my camera has taken me from the markets of Southeast Asia to the glaciers of Antarctica, from the plains of Africa to the alleyways of South America, and every single place has left something in my photographs and in me.
Why Seven Continents?
People sometimes ask whether completing all seven continents was a goal I set out to achieve deliberately. The honest answer is that it grew naturally from a fundamental restlessness; a belief, held since I was young, that the world is far larger and stranger and more beautiful than any one place can show you.
My husband Mike and I have always believed that travel is among the most important investments a family can make. Not tourism exactly, though there is nothing wrong with tourism. But genuine, slow, attentive travel, the kind where you eat where locals eat, stay long enough to notice patterns, and bring your children along so they learn early that their way of doing things is one way among many. We have homeschooled our children in countries across Southeast Asia. We have volunteered alongside communities in Africa and India. We have stood on every continent and tried, imperfectly, to understand what we were seeing.
The camera is what makes me look carefully enough to actually see it.
Africa: Learning to Wait
Africa was where I first understood that wildlife photography is almost entirely an exercise in patience. You can have the best equipment, the perfect light, the ideal position and still miss the photograph if you move too soon or too late.
I photographed a leopard in the early morning, in that brief window when the light is neither harsh nor flat but golden and directional and alive. The leopard held still. I held still. For a few seconds, we were simply two creatures occupying the same patch of morning, and then it was over. I had the frame. But I only had it because I had learned, by that point, to resist the urge to shoot immediately and instead wait for the moment that was actually there, not the one I expected.
Africa also gave me some of my most humanizing experiences as a traveler. The communities I visited — often with volunteer groups, sometimes through connections made by Rebel Reform — maintained extraordinary social cohesion with far fewer material resources than any community I had encountered at home in Milwaukee. DELETE: That observation did not make me feel superior or generous. It made me feel instructed. These communities knew things about mutual support and human connection that I had been trying to build programmatically for years. I photographed what I saw and brought those images home as reminders.
South America: Grassroots Lessons
South America is where I learned the most about grassroots organizing, and I learned it not from a workshop or a book but from watching local nonprofit leaders work with almost nothing and accomplish extraordinary things.
I was particularly struck by the specificity of their interventions. Nothing was abstract. Everything was aimed at a particular person in a particular circumstance this family needs this, that neighborhood is missing that. The photography I did there reflects that specificity. I was drawn less to sweeping landscapes than to close, quiet portraits of everyday life: a woman arranging produce at a market stall, a child walking to school along a road that was more dust than pavement, an elderly man sitting in the shade outside a building whose walls told a hundred years of history in their peeling paint.
Those images, and the organizing philosophy behind them, came back to Milwaukee with me and shaped how I think about Rebel Reform's work. We try to be specific. We try to serve the person in front of us, not an abstraction of need.
India: The Weight of Scale
India humbled me in ways I did not fully expect. I had traveled widely before I went, and I thought I was prepared for the scale of what I would see. I was not.
What I found there was not only poverty though the poverty was real and confronting but also resilience of a kind that photography struggles to capture because it is so interior, so embedded in daily life that it doesn't announce itself. The most powerful images I made in India were not of suffering. They were of ordinary persistence: a family cooking dinner, a group of children doing homework on a rooftop, a man repairing a bicycle beside a road.
The bicycle image stayed with me for a long time. There is something universal about a bicycle about the modest miracle of human-powered mobility that cuts across every culture I've visited. It is perhaps part of why the bike giveaway program at Rebel Reform has always felt so personally meaningful to me. We have given away more than 4,000 bicycles to children in Milwaukee through our partnership with community organizations. Every single time I watch a child ride away on one of those bikes, I think about that man on the roadside in India, and the image I almost didn't take because I was moving too fast.
Southeast Asia: Color, Chaos, and the Case for Black and White
Southeast Asia presented me with a problem I have never entirely solved: it is almost impossibly colorful. Markets stacked with fruit and textiles, temples draped in gold, streets painted in ways that seem to defy any single frame.
And yet my best work from that part of the world is in black and white.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about why. Part of it is simply that color, in a scene so saturated with it, can overwhelm the photograph's other elements its geometry, its human story, its emotional core. Stripping the color away forces the viewer to look at what is actually happening, not just what is visually spectacular.
But I think there is something else too. Black-and-white photography insists on a kind of permanence. It removes the image from its specific historical moment from the particular fashions and signs and technologies that date a photograph and makes it feel, instead, like something that has always been true and will go on being true. The weight of a vendor's concentration over her stall. The way light divides a narrow street into two worlds. The laughter on a child's face. These things do not belong to a decade. They belong to the human experience.
That belief that there are things worth photographing because they are permanently true is one I carry into my humanitarian work as well. The need for dignity. The hunger for community. The particular joy of a child with a bicycle. These are not trends. They are constants.
Australia and New Zealand: Space and Silence
I have found, in my travels, that the photographs I treasure most from sparsely populated places are rarely the dramatic ones. They are the quiet ones. A single tree in a field. A road disappearing into distance. A sky with room enough in it to think.
Australia and New Zealand gave me space in a way that few other places have. Space to be a small thing in a large landscape, which is a perspective I find useful to revisit periodically. When you run an organization, manage relationships, coordinate logistics, and advocate loudly for the people your programs serve, it is easy to lose the thread of your own smallness. These landscapes restored it.
The photographs I brought back from that part of the world are among the most minimal of my career. Very little in the frame. A great deal of sky. I love them precisely because they are so different from the density and urgency of the work I do at home.
Antarctica: The Continent That Stopped Me Cold
I have already written elsewhere about Antarctica, but I will say again here what I always say: it is the place that stays with me most.
There is no culture to photograph in Antarctica in the way there is culture in every other place I have visited. No markets, no architecture, no faces shaped by generations of particular history. There is only the planet itself ice and sky and the sound of wind and, on certain extraordinary mornings, complete silence.
My black-and-white work from Antarctica was recognized with an honorable mention at the Monochrome Awards, and while I am proud of that recognition, what I value most about those images is what they remind me of every time I look at them. The world is ancient and enormous. We are brief and small. What we choose to do with our brief time in our small corner of it how we treat the people around us, what we build, what we give away matters more than the scale of the planet suggests it should.
I came home from Antarctica and threw myself into the work of Rebel Reform with a renewed sense of urgency. Not frantic urgency, but the settled, purposeful kind. The kind that comes from having stood somewhere that puts things in perspective.
What Seven Continents Taught Loretta Kryshak About Seeing
The through-line in all of this, the thing that connects a leopard at dawn in Africa to an ice field in Antarctica to a child receiving a bicycle in Milwaukee is attention. Photography has taught me that attention is the foundation of everything worth doing. You cannot photograph what you have not truly seen. You cannot help a community you have not truly listened to. You cannot lead an organization well if you are too busy to notice what is actually happening inside it.
I travel because the world is worth seeing. I photograph because the act of making an image forces me to see it more carefully. And I do the work I do at Rebel Reform because everything I have seen on seven continents and in the streets of the city where I live has convinced me that people, everywhere, are worth showing up for.
That is the only philosophy I have ever needed.
Loretta Kryshak is the Executive Director of Rebel Reform, the social outreach arm of Rebel Converting. She is an award-winning photographer whose work has been recognized by the Monochrome Awards, and she has traveled to all seven continents. She documents her journeys, photography, and humanitarian work at lorettakryshak.com.
Why Milwaukee, Wisconsin Is a City Worth Fighting For
I have stood on every continent this planet has to offer. I have photographed glaciers in Antarctica, markets in Southeast Asia, plains in Africa, and alleyways in South America. I have seen cities that dazzle and landscapes that silence you. And after all of it, I come home to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I come home to Milwaukee not because I have to, but because I want to. Because this city, complicated and imperfect and fiercely alive, is worth showing up for every single day.
That is not a sentiment I hold lightly. I have been involved in Milwaukee's nonprofit and business communities for over a decade through Rebel Reform and Rebel Converting, and I have seen firsthand both the challenges this city faces and the extraordinary people who refuse to let those challenges have the last word. Milwaukee is a city worth fighting for. DELETE? This is why.
Milwaukee Has a Community That Shows Up
I have organized a lot of events in my life. Bike drives, backpack distributions, mask campaigns, food fundraisers. And the thing that has never once failed to move me is how Milwaukee shows up when asked.
When we launched #MaskUpMKE in early 2020, we did not know what to expect. The pandemic was new, fear was high, and we were asking people to trust us with something urgent and logistically complex. Within weeks, we had 22 partner agencies, support from organizations like the United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha County, Milwaukee Public Transit, and the Milwaukee Bucks, and a network of volunteers that helped us distribute over 4 million masks to healthcare workers and underserved communities across the region.
Milwaukee did that. Not one organization, not one family, not one well-funded campaign. Milwaukee, its people, its institutions, its businesses, its neighbors did that together.
That same spirit shows up every year at our annual bike drive. Families dig bikes out of garages and storage units. Local businesses run internal donation campaigns. Mechanics volunteer entire evenings to repair and tune donated bicycles. And on the day of the event, at places like Kosciuszko Park, hundreds of children ride away on bikes that a community decided they deserved to have. We have given away more than 4,000 bicycles and helmets since we began not because Rebel Reform is extraordinary, but because Milwaukee is.
The Organizations Holding This City Together
Every city has its crisis responders: its hospitals, its fire departments, its police. Milwaukee has those, and it also has a dense, remarkable network of nonprofit organizations that address the quieter crises: hunger, homelessness, isolation, lack of opportunity.
I have had the privilege of working alongside some of the best of them.
Just One More Ministry feeds thousands of malnourished children in Milwaukee every week. When Rebel Reform partnered with them to raise over $50,000 for their summer campaign and then rolled up our sleeves to help renovate their 24,000-square-foot warehouse, I was reminded of what an organization operating with genuine urgency looks like. They do not wait for conditions to be perfect. They serve the person in front of them, today, with whatever they have.
The 16th Street Community Health Centers have been a cornerstone partner in our bike day programming, connecting us with the families and children who need what we have to give. Their deep roots in Milwaukee's south side and their trust within the community make everything we try to do there more effective.
Organizations like Mr. Bob's Under the Bridge serve Milwaukee's homeless population with the kind of personal, relentless dedication that no government program can fully replicate. When Rebel Reform provides backpacks; over 1,300 distributed in recent years, filled with blankets, toiletries, and yes, happy socks; it is organizations like this that ensure they reach the people who need them most.
Milwaukee's nonprofit ecosystem is not perfect. It is underfunded, often overstretched, and navigating systemic challenges that no single organization can solve alone. But it is also among the most committed collections of mission-driven people I have encountered anywhere in the world. That is worth naming and worth protecting.
Milwaukee's Complicated History Is Part of Its Strength
I would not be honest if I wrote a love letter to Milwaukee without acknowledging its contradictions.
Milwaukee is frequently cited in national studies as one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States. Its north side and south side carry histories of disinvestment and inequity that did not happen by accident and will not be corrected without sustained, intentional effort. Poverty is concentrated in ways that are visible and uncomfortable if you are paying attention and invisible if you are not.
I am paying attention. Part of what has kept me in this work, and in this city, for as long as I have been doing it, is the belief that the places with the most complicated histories are also the places where the most important work is happening. Milwaukee is not a city that needs to be fixed by people from somewhere else. It is a city that needs its own people, people who love it and know it and have chosen to stay to keep showing up.
That is what Rebel Reform tries to be: a locally rooted organization that takes seriously the responsibility of being embedded in a community. We are not passing through. We live here. Our children go to school here. We shop at local businesses, know our neighbors, and care about what happens on streets beyond our own. That rootedness is, I believe, the only real foundation for meaningful community work.
Lake Michigan and the Geography of Home
There is something about living on a Great Lake that shapes a person's sense of place in ways that are hard to articulate. Lake Michigan is enormous, genuinely oceanic in its scale and its moods, and yet it is freshwater, approachable, swimmable, shared. It belongs to everyone in a way that oceans, for all their grandeur, do not quite manage.
I photograph Lake Michigan often. The light on the water in the early morning is some of the best light I have found anywhere, and I have looked for good light on every continent. The lakefront is also where some of our most meaningful community events happen including the annual bike collection drive with Lake Express Ferry, whose partnership has been essential to the growth of our bike program. Standing at the lakefront in April, watching donor after donor arrive with bikes loaded into minivans and truck beds, with the lake behind them and the city skyline in the distance that image, repeated year after year, is Milwaukee to me.
What Loretta Kryshak Wants People to Know About This City
I have met people, in my travels and in my work, who have a fixed idea of Milwaukeeusually formed by a headline or a statistic or someone else's story. I understand how that happens. Cities are large and complex and easy to reduce.
What I want people to know is that the Milwaukee I have experienced for over a decade is a city of extraordinary generosity, deep community pride, and a stubborn refusal to give up on its most vulnerable residents. It is a city where a manufacturing company can decide to become a force for social good and find, almost immediately, a community ready to support and amplify that work. It is a city where a teenager can make 10,000 masks during a pandemic and be celebrated for it. It is a city where mechanics volunteer their Saturday nights to fix bikes for children they will never meet.
Visit Milwaukee will tell you about the restaurants and the festivals and the architecture, all of which are genuinely worth your time. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I earned my degrees in Finance and Management Information Systems, anchors an academic community that produces thoughtful, civic-minded graduates year after year. Milwaukee Area Technical College provides accessible pathways to skilled trades and professional careers for thousands of students who might not otherwise have them.
These institutions matter. But what matters more, to me, is the culture they exist within: a culture that, at its best, takes seriously the idea that a city's strength is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members.
Milwaukee is not there yet. No city is. But Milwaukee is fighting, every day, to get closer. And as long as it is, I will be here fighting alongside it.
A City That Earns Its Loyalists
I did not grow up thinking I would spend my career in Milwaukee. I grew up thinking I would use my degrees and my skills to build something successful, travel the world, and figure the rest out as I went. What I did not anticipate was falling in love with a city — with its lake and its neighborhoods and its people and its particular, stubborn, generous spirit.
Rebel Reform exists because Milwaukee made it possible. Every bike we have given away, every mask we distributed, every backpack we filled, every dollar we raised for Just One More Ministry; none of it happened in a vacuum. It happened because this city's people, institutions, and organizations chose to show up alongside us.
That is what a city worth fighting for looks like. Not perfect. Not without struggle. But alive, and generous, and unwilling to abandon the people who need it most.
Milwaukee, I am not going anywhere.
Loretta Kryshak is the Executive Director of Rebel Reform, the social outreach arm of Rebel Converting. She is a humanitarian, award-winning photographer, and global traveler who has called southeastern Wisconsin home for over a decade. Follow her work at lorettakryshak.com.
From Finance and IT to Nonprofit Leadership: Loretta Kryshak on Building a Life of Purpose
If you'd asked Loretta Kryshak in her early twenties what she pictured for her career, she would have described spreadsheets, network architectures, and writing code, not warehouses full of donated bikes, or press appearances to announce million-mask milestones, or spending an afternoon photographing children at a park in Milwaukee receive their first bicycle.
Life has a way of taking your skills somewhere you never expected to need them and Loretta has spent a lot of years being grateful for that.
A Foundation Built on Finance, Technology, and Design
I graduated from UWM, where I earned two bachelor's degrees. One in Finance, one in Management Information Systems both landing me on the Dean's Honor List. I started out using my financial skills as a computer programmer, customizing financial programs focused on basic MRP to manage inventory control, production planning, and scheduling for manufacturing industries. Over time, I was a pioneer when barcoding became available to help make inventory control easier.
I also hold an Associate of Arts in Graphic Design and Photography from Milwaukee Area Technical College, where I earned Dean's Honor Roll recognition as well.
That combination; financial literacy, systems thinking, and visual design sounds eclectic, but it has turned out to be exactly the toolkit that nonprofit leadership demands.
Running Rebel Reform is not a lax job. It requires understanding how money moves, where it should go, and how to make a case for specific allocations when resources are limited. It requires systems thinking: how do you coordinate 22 partner agencies to distribute 4 million masks during a public health crisis? How do you organize a warehouse, a volunteer team, a logistics chain, and a community outreach campaign simultaneously? Effective organizational communication requires a strategic blend of clear, compelling, and mission-true messaging, where both visual and verbal elements are aligned.
Finance. Systems. Design. I use all three, every single day.
The Corporate Path That Preceded the Nonprofit One
Before Rebel Reform, I worked in the corporate world as a consultant, project manager, and systems analyst. These weren't glamorous titles, but the work was intellectually rigorous and taught me skills that I don't think any amount of nonprofit-specific training could have replicated.
As a consultant, I learned to enter unfamiliar organizations, quickly understand how they actually function (as opposed to how they say they function), identify inefficiencies, and recommend solutions that could survive implementation. As a project manager, I learned to hold timelines and people accountable without destroying relationships. As a systems analyst, I learned to think in processes to see not just what's happening now, but what happens next, and next after that.
All of this became the architecture of how I lead Rebel Reform. When we partnered with Just One More Ministry to renovate their 24,000-square-foot warehouse, I wasn't just writing a check, I was managing a project. When we designed the #MaskUpMKE campaign, I wasn't just organizing volunteers, I was architecting a system that had to scale across county lines and health department relationships and manufacturing logistics simultaneously.
I am proud of what Rebel Reform has accomplished. I am equally proud of the professional foundation that made those accomplishments possible.
What Loretta Kryshak Believes About Women in Leadership
I am careful not to overclaim about my own experience, but I do think there's something worth saying about the path that led me here.
I came of age in fields of finance, information technology, systems engineering where women were present but not common. Where being taken seriously required a certain kind of persistent, unflappable competence. Where you learned quickly that you did not get the benefit of the doubt; you demonstrated it, every time, and then you moved forward.
The women I admire most in leadership share knowing that confidence comes from knowing your worth and refusing to compromise it. I try to model that at Rebel Reform, and I try to model it for the young people in our community of both, boys and girls who are watching how adults show up when things are hard.
The Junior Women's Club and Community Roots
Before Rebel Reform, when I became a mother , I joined the Junior Women's Club of Mequon an organization that exemplifies exactly the kind of community-level relationship building that I believe underpins all meaningful civic work. Volunteering and organizing through organizations like the Junior Women's Club has kept me connected to the fabric of everyday life in southeastern Wisconsin in a way that a nonprofit executive role alone never could.
Local organizations matter. Neighborhood relationships matter. The woman you serve alongside at a community event is the person who calls when she hears about a family that needs bikes or backpacks or a warm meal. That network is irreplaceable and it doesn't build itself.
A Career That Keeps Evolving
I'm often asked whether I miss corporate life. The honest answer is: As a Graphic Artist I am still very much involved with our company and everyday chaos at Rebel Converting.
But, what I also have — leading an organization that directly changes the material conditions of people's lives, while also pursuing photography, and traveling with my family, and staying connected to the community where I've built my life — is richer than anything I pictured in those early years of spreadsheets and network diagrams.
The skills are the same. The purpose is larger. And the work, even on its hardest days, is worth it.
Loretta Kryshak is the Executive Director of Rebel Reform, the social outreach arm of Rebel Converting. She holds degrees in Finance, Management Information Systems, and Graphic Design & Photography and has spent over a decade leading community impact programs in southeastern Wisconsin. Follow her work at lorettakryshak.com.
Milwaukee Charity Bike Collection 2026: Behind the Scenes
Every bicycle has a story. Here's a look at what it really takes to collect, restore, and deliver hundreds of bikes to kids across Milwaukee who need them most.
2026 16th Annual Bike Collection
There's a moment every year that I look forward to more than almost anything else; the day when the warehouse at Rebel Converting fills up with bikes that are donated, collected, sorted, and waiting. Each one represents a child in Milwaukee who will soon have something they've never had before: the freedom to ride.
This year’s bike drive wouldn’t be what it is without the incredible support of Lake Express Ferry, whose partnership continues to power the event year after year. By offering complimentary ferry tickets to donors, they’ve helped turn a simple collection into one of the largest community-driven bike donation efforts in the region.
The 2026 16th Annual Bike Collection was amazing, and I wanted to pull back the curtain and show you what actually happens behind the scenes; the planning, the volunteers, the long days, and the unexpected moments that make this all worth it.
Bikes Come in Faster than We Can Sort Them
Most people don't realize that the bike giveaway begins months before the actual event. In addition to the bikes dropped off on event day, we hear from people all year long who want to give back. Apartment complexes and local police departments often reach out about unclaimed or extra bikes they’d like to donate. We also work closely with DreamBikes and Working Bikes, who help us put some of the higher-quality adult bikes to good use in exchange for kids bikes that go straight back into our community. And just as often, it’s individuals calling or emailing to ask, “Can I drop off a bike?”—which, of course, the answer is always yes.
The response every year humbles me. People dig through garages, pull bikes from storage units, call their neighbors. Businesses organize internal drives. Schools run collection competitions. By the time the drop-off dates arrive, bikes are coming in faster than we can sort them.
The Volunteers Who Make It Happen
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: Rebel Reform is only as strong as the people who show up. This year, our volunteer team has been extraordinary. From teenagers giving up their Saturdays to retired mechanics tuning up donated bikes, every person who walks through the warehouse door is changing a child's life.
“When you hand a child a bicycle, you’re not just giving them a way to get around. You’re giving them independence and that means everything.”
The sorting process alone takes dozens of hands. Every donated bike is assessed — tires checked, brakes tested, frames inspected for safety. Those that need work go to our repair station, where skilled volunteers spend hours making sure every bike that leaves our warehouse is truly road-ready.
Documenting the Stories
As a photographer, I find these collection days almost overwhelming in the best possible way. The light in the warehouse in the early morning, the concentration on a volunteer's face as they adjust a derailleur, the pride of a donor handing over a bike they've carried from their car. These are the images I live for.
I've been shooting this collection from every angle this year, and I'll be sharing photos throughout the season right here on the blog and on social media. Follow along because the real story isn't in the final giveaway event. It's in all the quiet, unglamorous hours that make it possible.
From Collection to Communities
Join us this June at Kosciuszko Park Bike Day on Saturday, June 13, 2026 from 11:00am–2:00pm, and see firsthand how these bike donations transform lives across Milwaukee. It is one of our favorite events of the year, and we would love to see you there. Every bike is carefully inspected for safety by the teams at Rebel Converting, the Wisconsin Bike Fed, DreamBikes, and Working Bikes—ensuring each one is ready to ride when it’s handed off to a new owner at our bike giveaway on June 13.
Thank you to every single person who donated a bike, volunteered their time, or simply cheered us on. And a special thank you to Lake Express Ferry for making this event possible year after year. Together, we are keeping Milwaukee moving.
Come celebrate with us!
Kosciuszko Park Bike Day
Saturday, June 13, 2026 · 11:00am – 2:00pm
Kosciuszko Park, Milwaukee, WI