Emily M. Crespin heads Touchstone Consulting Group, a strategy management consulting firm focused on achieving powerful outcomes, and serves as a Vice President for SRA International. As Director of Touchstone, Ms. Crespin leads a group of more than 200 professionals in the delivery of strategy consulting and program management services for clients in federal, state, and local governments, non-profits, and private organizations.

As one of the leading thinkers on organizational transformation, Ms. Crespin works with organizations to fundamentally rethink how they perform their missions. Touchstone’s clients consistently see better, longer-lasting results from their strategic initiatives. Her teams of professionals work with clients to reach beyond immediate struggles, clearly define purpose and direction, and achieve better outcomes. She has personally led initiatives for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Business Transformation; National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of the CIO; and the American Red Cross, Office of the CIO. Touchstone’s other clients include the General Services Administration; National Science Foundation; Office of Personnel Management; DHS Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) Command, Control and Interoperability Division (CCI); DHS National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) Office of Emergency Communications (OEC); the states of Virginia and California; and the City of Boston.

Ms. Crespin brings a unique level of skilled facilitation that is focused on designing and delivering high-impact group sessions based on principles of purpose, creativity, engagement, and action. Ms. Crespin and the Touchstone team facilitate everything from small working sessions to large off-sites (with 100+ participants), which are designed to accomplish specific outcomes including vision, strategy, operational plans, issue resolution, and stakeholder alignment.

Immediately prior to joining Touchstone, Ms. Crespin served as a senior business analyst at Pivotal Insight LLC, providing consultation, research, and strategic planning expertise to senior executives of the U.S. Navy. She has also held senior management and consulting roles at Guardian Life Insurance Company and American Management Systems.

Ms. Crespin received her Bachelors of Arts in Organizational Psychology from the University of Virginia. She resides in Falls Church, VA, with her husband Richard and their three children.

In 2000, Sean Tuohey founded PeacePlayers International, (www.peaceplayersintl.org) a global non profit that blends proven theories of social modeling, conflict resolution and public diplomacy to operate year round youth basketball programs in historically divided areas. PeacePlayers currently operates programs in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, Cyprus, and New Orleans involving over 45,000 youth. The organization has been featured on CNN,” “ESPN,” “NBC The Today Show,” “BBC”, “CBS Sunday Morning,” The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated and Bill Clinton’s book, Giving. In 2007, PeacePlayers received the “Arthur Ashe For Courage”, at the ESPY Awards, and in 2008 Sean and his brother Brendan received the “Laureas Sport for Good Award” at the Laureas Global Award show in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Sean is currently writing a book about his experiences founding PeacePlayers.

In 2008, Sean founded Siyanda, a comprehensive, peer education and mentorship program that aims to break through the stigma associated with HIV and effectively connect adolescent youth to existing treatment. Through a groundswell of community cultivated programming and strategic, multi-sector partnerships, Siyanda provides youth, ages 15-18, with long-term, psychosocial support that promotes access and adherence to medical treatment. Sean is currently co-piloting his strategy in South Africa, and in Washington, DC.

A change catalyst, Charles Tsai is dedicated to helping young people
imagine and realize a better future for themselves and their
communities. He mentors young changemakers through his work with
Ashoka’s Youth Venture, the world’s largest incubator of youth-led
ventures, as well as his own charity, Global Youth Fund. He’s also
the creator of The Creative Activist Toolkit, an interactive visual
guide to social change written for and by young leaders.

How did this passion for social change come about? Perhaps it’s from
living a life constantly on the move. Born in Taiwan, Charles spent
his early years moving from Thailand to Malawi to different cities in
the United States and then to Canada, where he now lives.

He studied English Literature and Rhetoric at University of California
at Berkeley and got his Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia
University.

Charles then worked as a reporter and producer for CNN at its global
headquarters. He specialized in educational features and produced the
10-part series, Millennium Voyage, which followed American students on
their educational travels around the world.

He then left CNN to produce PBS GlobalTribe, a groundbreaking show
that profiled changemakers around the world. It opened his eyes to
just how much the world today needs everyone everywhere doing what
they can to make our world a better place.

That challenge continues to be at the heart of his work.

A 2010 Rhodes Scholar, Tyler Spencer is currently serving as Founder and Director of The Grassroot Project. He first conceived of the idea for The Grassroot Project after spending two summers in South Africa volunteering to set up HIV prevention programs in DeBeers/Grassroot Soccer diamond mining communities. Realizing that HIV was a big problem in DC, that the curriculum he used in South Africa could be adapted to fit DC, and that athletes had the potential to change lives and have their own lives changed in the process, he created The Grassroot Project.

He started in January 2009 with a group of old teammates and 30 other athletes from Georgetown University. Since then, his program has grown to involve more than 150 athletes from Georgetown, George Washington, and Howard Universities. Volunteer athlete “coaches” from these schools have reached out to more than 400 youth in the past year, running 8-week sports, life skills, and HIV awareness programs in middle schools across the city. The organization became a 501c3 in August, and in addition to receiving a Youth Venture grant, it has received funding from MTV, Nike, and the Washington DC Department of Health. It has also established partnerships with the DC Public School System and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, and it hopes to grow to include American and Maryland Universities in September 2010.

The Grassroot Project is currently launching the TeamUp! Campaign to unite youth in DC and South Africa and create an exchange around AIDS awareness during the 2010 World Cup. The campaign and the exchange are the subject of the film, Lose the Shoes.

Matthew Davis is a senior consultant at SRA-Touchstone Consulting
Group. Matt possesses extensive experience in strategic planning,
international business, and organizational design and change
management. While at Touchstone, Matt has worked with leaders at
FEMA, NOAA, USAID and other agencies on large-scale strategic
initiatives. Projects include changing how NOAA’s National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS) regulates the fishing industry to improve
fish stock populations, helping African government leaders develop
country-strategies to take ownership of their health information
systems, and improving the management of FEMA’s disaster assistance
employees. Matt also founded Renew Strategies, an international
investment consulting firm helping US investors achieve both social
and financial returns by investing in businesses in Africa and other
emerging economies. At Renew Matt assessed hundreds of small- to
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya,
Nigeria and Botswana. Matt has also worked with a number of non-profit
organizations on domestic poverty issues. Matt has a Bachelors of
Science in Physics, and a Master’s of Science with an emphasis in
Business Management from the University of Utah.