Katy Crosby
Catherine “Katy” Crosby serves as the chief of staff for the City of Toledo where she works with a team to oversee the city operations and advance Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz’s policy agenda. Prior to this role, she served as the executive director of the City of Dayton Human Relations Council reporting directly to the Mayor and City Commission. Her experience includes civil rights enforcement in the areas of housing, employment, public accommodation and credit; capacity building for small businesses to include diversity and inclusion programs with a focus on compliance; community relations programs that focus on immigrant integration, reducing violence, and improving the relationship between the community and police. In addition, she has also been actively engaged in advocating and developing strategies to ensure equitable investment by financial institutions in low to moderate income communities and communities of color. She considers herself a convener encouraging cross sector collaboration to foster effective strategies for community building.
Katy’s community involvement has earned her a number of recognitions including being named a BizWomen Power 50 by the Dayton Business Journal (DBJ) three years in a row. She was also named a 2016 DBJ 40 Under 40 and serves as a mentor to up and coming young professional women at the DBJ’s annual Mentoring Monday event. A public servant, she currently serves as the Board Secretary to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC). In this capacity, she worked with local groups across Ohio to negotiate community benefit agreements with banks in order to increase access to capital, mortgage lending, community and economic development projects and philanthropy for low to moderate income communities. These agreements exceeded $64 billion dollars across the banks’ markets. She serves on Fifth Third Bank’s national and state wide community advisory forum and is also a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Ohio Advisory Committee, an appointment by Senator Sherrod Brown. Other recent board memberships included the Miami Valley Urban League’s advisory board, The Dayton Foundation’s Minority Inclusion Steering Committee, steering committee for the University of Dayton’s West Dayton strategy, and the steering committee for the Dayton racial equity planning process.
Committed to developing talent, Ms. Crosby serves as a mentor connecting young professionals to individuals that provide insight on career development. Ms. Crosby believes in investing in her team to ensure they are prepared for their current roles while developing skills to pursue advancement opportunities. She is passionate and has made a lifelong commitment to creating access to opportunities, especially for those in our most vulnerable communities.
She is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. She holds a BS in accounting from Wilberforce University and a MPA from Wright State University. Her daughter Eryn, is a senior at Stivers School for the Arts and plans to attend Alabama A&M in the fall to study business administration with a minor in marketing.