Chrissy M. Thornton is the President and CEO of Associated Black Charities. A native New Yorker, she is a high energy, creative, and outgoing executive with a professional attitude and diverse experience. Chrissy possesses an effective combination of technical, managerial, and communication abilities along with excellent organizational and team building skills. She’s been recognized for developing professional staff training programs to revitalize departments and implementing organizational change efforts into growing businesses.
Experienced in organizational diagnosis and the design and facilitation of large-scale events and staff development activities, Chrissy has a twenty-year background in successful fundraising, donor and corporate relations, digital engagement, grant writing, and the seamless execution of exceptional meetings, events, training seminars, team building sessions, education conferences, fundraisers, peer-to-peer activities, and more! Chrissy is the author of 6 works, most known for the publication, Stop Scrambling, Start Bringing Home The Bacon: A Guide To Establishing An Effective Fundraising Plan for Your Non-Profit Organization.
She is a former real estate investor and franchise owner who believes in the power of entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and economic education and development. Having served as an independent consultant to non-profit organizations of all sizes across the country, Chrissy has successfully supported many with diagnosis and rebuilding, Board and committee onboarding and development, fundraising plan creation and execution, marketing and branding support, and the implementation of innovative fundraising and engagement activities.
Chrissy is passionate about community involvement and serves on a number Boards and Advisory Councils throughout Maryland.
Robyn Murphy is a Communications and Strategic Partnerships expert based in Maryland. As the owner of JRM Consultancy, she manages messaging and stewards relationships for organizations seeking to center diverse and inclusive partnerships and community upbuilding as pillars for global corporate success.
She established this business after a decade-long career in television, reporting and hosting for network affiliate stations and Black Entertainment Television, among others. Along the way she became the first female sports reporter for two NBC stations and the first woman to pen a sports column for the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper. Over time, Robyn established herself as one of America’s brightest personalities on the topics of sports-culture and the intersection of race, politics, and sports.
Robyn has been an on-air host of BETs election coverage and the moderator of nationally televised political and social justice panels for the network. She has written award-winning features and essays for national publications including a groundbreaking series in Vibe Magazine which explored the Kobe Bryant rape trial and its cultural impact; and a powerful Newsweek Magazine article on Raising Black Boys, which won the National Association of Black Journalists Excellence in Print Award. Robyn’s essays have been reprinted in several editions of the university textbook, Models for Writers. She has served as a Communications and Strategic Partnerships consultant for several high-profile corporations, non-profits, political organizations, athletes and celebrities.
Connect with Chrissy and Robyn on LinkedIn
Interview questions:
Q1: Who is ABC and What Do You Do?
Q2: What changes have happened or are taking place at the organization?
Q3: Why is racial equity in the forefront of issues for Black America?
Q4: What is your perspective of Baltimore having not been born and raised here?
Q5: What are ABC’s biggest needs at this time?
Q6: What are the challenges to ABC’s mission work?
Q7: What are tangible goals for the organization in your first year of leadership and in the next 3 to 5 years?
Q8: Why is collaboration such an important part of your leadership strategy and how do you see it being used to support ABC’s goals?
The mission of Associated Black Charities is to eliminate structural barriers and advance long-term solutions that create new opportunities for African Americans to thrive. ABC acknowledges structural racism’s effect on the racial wealth gap, workplace discrimination, health inequity, disparities in housing policies and practices, educational inequality, discriminating and dehumanizing laws and policies, and more. Using an equity framework as a convener and thought leader to end race-based barriers that impede African Americans from having an opportunity to succeed is at the heart of all of ABC’s programmatic initiatives. www.associatedblackcharities.org.
Recent News: https://www.associatedblackcharities.org/news
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