Leslie Crutchfield teaches Corporate Social Responsibility and Nonprofit Leadership courses at Georgetown McDonough, and her research focuses on leadership of mission-driven enterprises and how social change happens. Her executive roles at Georgetown include Executive Director of Business for Impact; Managing Director of the New Strategies for Nonprofit Leaders advanced executive program; and Co-Director of Small Business Corps. Through her teaching, research, and collaborations with colleagues across the university, Leslie aspires to create new knowledge and translate it into actionable practices that leaders can use to solve complex problems and advance the common good.
Leslie came to Georgetown in 2015 as a Senior Research Fellow to study how leaders drive big societal changes in the 21st century, and to write How Change Happens: Why Some Movements Succeed While Others Don’t (Wiley 2017). Reviewed in The New York Review of Books, her work was recognized as a "blueprint for leaders who want to take action on causes." Leslie's first book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, explores how leaders of 12 of the most successful nonprofits founded in recent U.S. history achieved impact at scale. The Economist recognized Forces for Good as “a serious piece of research” and featured it as one of the 10 “Best Books of the Year” in 2007. Forces for Good received the Skystone Partners Prize for Philanthropy Research and the Gold Prize for the Axiom Business Book Awards. The Updated & Revised Edition of Forces for Good released in 2012, and multiple editions are published globally in three languages.
Leslie's Stanford Social Innovation Review journal article, “Creating High-Impact Nonprofits,” was recognized as the “Number One Article" and most-read piece of the year (SSIR 2007) . Other contributed articles include: "Why the Best Leaders Give Power Away" (Fortune) and "What does it take for philanthropy to deliver results?" (Fortune).
As executive director of Business for Impact, Leslie leads a team of 20+ colleagues on a mission to harness the power of business to help people and the planet thrive. A teach, think, and do-tank, BFI convenes corporate, nonprofit, government and community leaders to solve complex problems, and co-creates meaningful educational experiences at Georgetown for learners of all career and life stages. Leslie aims to instill in her business school students the knowledge that there is more than one bottom line in business – and in life.
Before Georgetown, Leslie was senior advisor at FSG , the social Impact strategy consulting firm co-founded by Harvard University Professor Michael Porter. As an independent strategist, speaker, and coach, she has advised philanthropic leaders at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bank of America, Deloitte, PNC, and UN Foundation, and nonprofits including AAPA, CARE, Girls Not Brides, YMCA and YWCAs of Canada. A former grant-maker, Leslie directed the USA & Canada venture fund at Ashoka , the first global venture fund for social entrepreneurs with more than 4000 Fellows worldwide and assets of $100M+. She began her career as a social entrepreneur and co-founder of a national social enterprise.
Leslie currently serves on the Advisory Council of Boldly Go Philanthropy, the HealthFORCE Steering Committee, and was a volunteer with Crossroads Africa in The Gambia. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and BA from Harvard University.