Christa Grant, Ed.D.
Associate
Consulting Areas: DEIB Strategy and Organizational Change; Intergroup Relations; DEIB Crisis Management; DEIB training development in K-12 and Higher Education with a specialty in Catholic Higher Education; Sense of Belonging for Historically Underserved Student Populations; Human Resources in Non-Profit Sector
Dr. Christa Grant has 18+ years of experience working in higher education and non-profit organizations. Most recently, she has served as the Assistant Dean of Intercultural Affairs and Chief Diversity Officer for Student Affairs at Union College, NY, where she oversaw two departments, including religious and spiritual life. Dr. Grant worked closely with senior leadership and developed comprehensive response plans for crisis management in relation to DEI subjects as a co-chair for the bias response team. Dr. Grant also led the campus DEI committee to achieve the institution’s annual DEI goals that transformed campus culture, including implementing a BIPOC student support group to enhance their sense of belonging at the College. She also managed organizational DEI programs and workshops for faculty, students and administrators.
Prior to Union College, Dr. Grant was the Director of Damietta Cross-Cultural Center at Siena College, NY. She oversaw and assessed campus-wide DEI efforts and programming, implemented the College’s strategic plan and managed an operational budget of over $200,000 to improve campus climate. She also overhauled DEI-related training programs for student leaders, successfully executed an award-winning sustainable peer-to-peer DEI training program inside the classroom and institutionalized the campus’s inaugural ALANA and Lavender Graduation Celebration.
Dr. Grant is the recipient of the 2017 Mission Integration Award in Diversity and Inclusion from the Association for Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges and Universities (ASACCU). She also received an Academic Excellence Award in 2022 for her doctoral work at Northeastern University and the 2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Business Award issued by the Albany Business Review. Dr. Grant has presented her work at both regional and national conferences, including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE), the Association for Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges & Universities (ASACCU) and the College Student Personnel Association of New York State (CSPA-NY). Dr. Grant is a trained facilitator for the Intergroup Relations (IGR) program and the co-founding faculty for the IGR course at Siena College, where she has been serving as a professor for the past eight years. In addition to providing diversity workshops in the higher education setting, she has experience facilitating DEIB workshops with high school students, coaches, non-profit agencies, and federal agencies.
Dr. Grant has committed the majority of her professional career to higher education and is committed to creating sustainable change by being a scholar-practitioner. Her doctoral research focused on creating a sense of belonging for BIPOC students at predominantly white institutions.
Before working in higher education, Dr. Grant was the program director for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Schenectady. She is currently the Director of Staff Learning at Year Up, a national non-profit organization with a mission to close the opportunity divide for young adults.