Senior Associate
Crystal Bish is an educator and advocate dedicated to improving the learning and life experiences of children and youth. Crystal currently serves as a senior associate at NCTL working on knowledge capture and national technical assistance.
Crystal began her career in education as a math instructor in an alternative junior high/high school in upstate New York, where she taught seventh- and eighth-grade math to students assigned to the school for assaultive behaviors. In this context, she developed curriculum and honed her conflict resolving skills while facilitating her students’ successful re-entry into traditional district middle and high schools.
For nearly three years, Crystal worked for the Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc. (HCZ), a large social service agency in New York City. While there, she served as the Educational Coordinator for TRUCE, an after-school arts, media literacy and youth development program within the HCZ program family. Responsible for the design, implementation and oversight of TRUCE’s 8th – 12th grade academic program, Crystal created its Youth Scholar Program and served as the coordinator of several of HCZ’s intra-agency academic initiatives, including the test prep, middle school and college access initiatives.
Most recently, Crystal had the opportunity to work for the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she gained her first formal exposure to the education policy sector and valuable experience in the areas of policy research, formulation and analysis.
Crystal holds an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and earned her B.S. in Biology-Geology from the University of Rochester. She remains committed to the remedy of inequity through her research on poverty, education policy and related issues.