Leah Kral

Non-Profit Strategist & Author

Leah Kral is an expert facilitator and author who helps social entrepreneurs innovate and further social change.

Leah became intrigued by the question of how teams innovate during her early career in the for-profit world. Here, she worked alongside engineers, quality systems gurus, and industrial designers who were talented at solving complex problems to meet the needs of consumers. Bottom up empowerment always resulted in better products and happy customers and fulfilled team members. This environment exposed her to expert management ideas and philosophy in practice, as managers prevented bottlenecks, smoothed over operations, and empowered front line workers to solve problems.

Afterwards, when she joined the U.S. Peace Corps for a two-year volunteer service in Jamaica, she fell in love with working with nonprofits and social entrepreneurs. She witnessed immense social needs first-hand, and was deeply inspired by the commitment and dedication of Jamaicans working to make a difference. But at the same time she observed how despite the best of intentions and immense care, charitable organizations can sometimes have barn size blind spots, or even do more harm than good. These experiences made an impression on Leah, as she focused her graduate studies and thesis on these issues.

For the last 20 years, she has been providing tailored workshops and consulting to social entrepreneurs, nonprofit teams, executive directors, and boards across the country. She loves helping teams to break out of the busy daily routine and draw out their best creative thinking. She helps teams to design pilots, program strategies and meaningful evaluation approaches, leading to better outcomes and more compelling stories for supporters. She published a book on nonprofit innovation with Wiley (December, 2022), and regularly speaks at industry events on these topics. She has a passion for helping altruistic organizations achieve their missions, and is an active volunteer in her community.

She holds a Master of Arts in public policy from Duquesne University, a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Jamaica 2002-2004), and is an active volunteer in her community. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband Richard