Dr. Crystallee Crain - Director of Nonprofit Impact Consulting

Strategic Planning; Executive Coaching; Cultural Humility in Practice; Board Governance; Policy & Bylaw Review

Dr. Crystallee Crain (she/her/hers) is an interdisciplinary public health scholar and committed human rights advocate with more than 15 years of national consulting experience. She designs and facilitates trauma-informed trainings and capacity-building initiatives grounded in prevention science and participatory practice. Crain partners with organizations to translate people-centered values into program design, policies, and operational practice, helping agencies align mission and vision with equitable, healing-centered implementation.

Her work centers on illuminating layers of institutional inequality while supporting communities to shift culture and practice to improve life chances. By bridging research, healing justice, and community capacity building, Crain advances transformative responses to violence, centers liberatory practices, and promotes healing as a strategy for durable change. Her scholarship and applied work reflect a sustained commitment to culturally responsive evaluation and collective liberation.

As a nonprofit capacity-building consultant, Crain has led organizational assessments, strategic planning, and leadership development across community-based agencies and foundations. She supports nonprofits with participatory program design, evaluation systems that honor lived expertise, equity-focused governance coaching, and funder engagement strategies that protect community autonomy. Her approach combines practical implementation supports—such as logic model development, performance measurement, and trauma-informed supervision—with culturally humble processes that strengthen resilience, accountability, and long-term sustainability.

Crystallee is a Doctor of Philosophy in Transformative Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. She holds a Master of Arts in Social Sciences (a concentration in Sociology from Eastern Michigan University), and a Bachelor's of Science in Political Science from Northern Michigan University. In 2013 she received executive training in Health and Human Rights from the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Dr. Crain has served as a member of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Commission, The City of Portland's Human Rights Commission, and is a current member of the American Psychological Association, the American Evaluation Association and the ACE Network which is focused on culturally responsive evaluation and is a newly appointed Board Member to the Michigan Nonprofit Association. In October 2024 Dr. Crain was awarded the International Impact Book Award, in the Multicultural Category for her Cultural Humility in Practice Workbook.

Crystallee@nonprofnetwork.org