Biography
Dr. Paul R. Ahr
President & CEO
Tel: 305.374.1065, Ext. 307
Email: Dr.Paul@camillus.org
Since 2004, Dr. Paul R. Ahr has served as president and chief executive officer of Camillus House (Camillus) in Miami, Florida. Serving the South Florida community since 1960, Camillus is a faith-based non-profit organization that provides humanitarian services to men, women and children who are poor and homeless. Camillus offers a full continuum of services that includes food, emergency shelter, transitional and permanent housing, substance abuse and mental illness treatment, and job training and placement. Camillus operates with an annual budget in excess of $11 million and provides services at 16 sites through more than 150 employees.
A licensed psychologist with extensive experience in the mental health and rehabilitative treatment fields, Dr. Ahr is a former director of State of Missouri’s Department of Mental Health (1979-1986) and former Assistant Commissioner in the Virginia Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (1975-1979). In 1986, he founded the Altenahr Group, Ltd., a management consulting firm with offices in St. Louis, MO and Miami Beach, FL, consulting with over 150 major corporations, not-for-profit organizations and other agencies.
A native of New Jersey, Dr. Ahr was a cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He was awarded a doctorate degree in clinical psychology by the Catholic University of America and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Southern California. He was a post-doctoral fellow in community mental health administration at the Harvard Medical School and was awarded a certificate in international affairs by Washington University in St. Louis. He is an active member of the graduate faculty of the Department of Health Management and Informatics at the University of Missouri - Columbia, and has held teaching posts at Boston University, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Southern California.
Dr. Ahr is the author of two books on public mental health services and co-authored a third book, on employee retention, with his son, Dr. Thomas B. Ahr. He is married to Patricia A. Forde, and together they have three additional children, Andrew, Victoria and Patricia and two grandchildren, Matthew and Brian.
His latest book, Letters to Camillus: Autobiography of a Ministry and its Spanish language version, Cartas a Camillus: Autobiographia de un Ministerio are available through the Institute of Homeless Studies Press.