Career Of A Boss

Driven publicist grows from an employee to founder and president of her own company.

- Kalani Dantley

Charisse Curtis spent the first part of her career in public relations as an employee, learning vital lessons from prestigious firms across the country. She’ll spend the rest of her career as a boss, using the experiences from her past to fulfill a lifelong dream while curating her future.

Curtis, 31, coupled stints as a publicist in New York, Miami and Los Angeles with an unmitigated sense of ambition. In 2018, she founded her own firm, Milano Consulting.

The ebullient Washington D.C. native seeks only to help her clients through her personable business savvy, and already works with a variety of professional athletes, businesses and restaurants.

“In the past, my professional accolades always felt that they belonged to those agencies,” Curtis says. “So now, owning my own company I celebrate victories on behalf of my clients, for myself as the founder and also for the achievements of my employees.”

Curtis in her native Washington D.C. developed a sense of drive the city couldn’t harness and knew at 15 that she wanted more. She attended St. John’s University in New York City and walked onto the women’s basketball team, for which she played two years without a scholarship and experienced the rigors and thrills of a Division I athlete.

She quit the team though in pursuit of her professional career, and as an upperclassman secured internships with the Washington Wizards, the Rachel Ray Show and a pair of public relations firms, G.S. Schwartz Public Relations and Pollock communications.