Erin O. Crosby is the Director of Women’s Empowerment and Racial Justice at YWCA Greenwich. In this role, she leads the newly established Center for Equity and Justice (CEJ), which equips organizations, businesses, and practitioners to develop and rethink policies, priorities, and culture through the lens of racial and gender equity. Four pillars guide the work of the CEJ–community education, direct programming, policy advocacy, and systemic change.
Erin most recently served as the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Budd Center: Involving Communities in Education in the Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. In this role, she built the relationships, infrastructure, and capacity for equitable, community-centered collaboration to power and sustain a collective impact partnership between nonprofits, PK-12 schools, and a university. In 2018, Erin began co-leading the community development design team for a public-private partnership to co-create and open a PK-8 STEM School in a historically marginalized community west of downtown Dallas. Her team created the systems and structures needed to integrate wraparound service provision into the school.
Erin began her career as a youth program coordinator for the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas, developing and facilitating life skills programs for teen parents in Dallas ISD and the juvenile justice system. In 2005, she became the program and communications director for Leadership Women, designing learning opportunities for emerging and established leaders to advance their leadership strengths and to expand their understanding of the issues and opportunities shaping Texas.
She is a graduate of the inaugural Racial Equity NOW cohort led by Dallas Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation. As a Dallas Public Voices Fellow, her op-eds on institutional abuse and racial violence were published on Patheos and Truthout. Erin served as a founding board member of SMU’s Black Faculty and Staff Association and a citywide trainer with the Center for Racial Justice in Education. Erin is a co-founder of Kolektif V, a Black and Brown, women-owned consulting agency that brings together more than 15 years of collective knowledge in nonprofits, the corporate sector, and PK-16 education. She holds a Master’s degree in print journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor’s degree in English from SMU, and she is pursuing a doctorate in PK-12 educational leadership at SMU.