Crystal Houston

Visiting Professor Crystal Houston is an entrepreneur, media innovation scholar and startup business coach and mentor. She teaches graduate courses in strategic leadership communications and ethics, the business and future of journalism, and courses on media management and advanced media – courses that put communications students at the intersection of media, technology and business. Houston is Co-Founder and CMO at Llab Marketing, a startup providing helping small businesses to scale quickly. She spends her summers teaching the kickoff course in the advanced media Master of Arts program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.

Recognition

In 2020, Houston was named to the Poynter Institute for Journalism’s Leadership Academy for Women in Media. In 2019, she co-founded Citeful, which was awarded a $40k grant from the City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s News Integrity Initiative. The digital media startup was a 2020 SXSW Pitch Competition Finalist in the Content & Entertainment category.

Scholarship

Houston writes and speaks about the creator economy and new media. Past talks include discussions on The Strategic Social Media Marketing Mix presented at the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans & Military Families’ Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship (V-WISE) conference in Tempe, Technology’s Role in Beating Misinformation presented at the Voice of Blockchain conference in Chicago, and The Communicator’s Guide to the Blockchain Universe presented at Syracuse University’s Blockchain Immersive weekend in New York City.

Community

When not teaching, Houston is a mentor at SEED SPOT, where she serves as a business pitch coach for entrepreneurs creating game-changing solutions to social problems, and an advisor and mentor for We Rise, a black entrepreneurship incubator at Local First Arizona (LFA). Houston also provides strategic consulting and coaching to distressed businesses through LFA’s Arizona Economic Recovery Center.

Background

Previously, Houston spent more than 20 years developing strategic marketing and communications at Fortune 500 companies, agencies and nonprofits like GM, PetSmart and United Way.

Houston earned a master’s degree in television, radio and film with an emphasis in digital media entrepreneurship from the S.I Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University; an M.B.A. from Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry University; a bachelor’s degree in graphic design and writing from Eastern Michigan University; and a Blockchain and the Law Certificate from University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law. She is a member of the National Speaker’s Association, and a past board member at Women’s Audio Mission (WAM).