CRP, Inc. - CRP's Senior Staff

Corporate Resources

CRP's Senior Staff

Carolyn B. Rudd, Ed.D., President/CEO. - Dr. Rudd is the founder, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and President of CRP, Incorporated, a diversified and solutions-oriented management and professional services consulting firm. Her distinguished career spans over 30 years in education, proposal development, Federal contracting, consulting, business, and leadership development. Prior to establishing CRP in 1988, Dr. Rudd taught and served in leadership capacities at several universities and consulted for numerous Federal agencies and nonprofit organizations. Under her leadership, CRP has evolved into one of the leading businesses in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Dr. Rudd founded CRP in an effort to impact social policy and provide professional employment opportunities. In the years since, her company has earned a reputation for excellence in consultation and facilitation, training and technical assistance, research and evaluation, program management and coordination, and policy assessment and analysis. Today CRP, is considered an industry leader in providing logistical solutions in support of Federal policy and programmatic imperatives. Dr. Rudd is leading CRP on a path of strategic realignment designed to infuse cutting-edge business practices into its corporate infrastructure, create new efficiencies, and improve its competitive position. CRP's success is a testament to the high-performing, highly focused, and results-oriented organization that is an extension and embodiment of Dr. Rudd's leadership philosophy. She has long been a forceful and tireless advocate for minority-and women-owned businesses, and she consistently has used her position as a nationally recognized leader in the small business community to promote the interests of traditionally disadvantaged business people. Dr. Rudd counts among her many honors her participation as a member of Leadership Greater Washington (LGW), an organization that connects and challenges diverse regional leaders to improve the quality of life in the capital region. Dr. Rudd received her B.S. and M.Ed. degrees from Virginia State University and her Ed.D. from The College of William and Mary.

Anthony Rudd, B.S., Executive Vice President. - Mr. Anthony W. Rudd, CRP's Executive Vice President, is responsible for strategic direction and the financial strength of CRP. He joins the CRP team after more than 30 years in corporate America and four years of military service. Mr. Rudd brings years of hands-on management experience in successfully developing and implementing strategic plans. He serves the company in two significant ways, strategic execution and corporate finance and compliance. He is also responsible for program engagement and management and he ensures the delivery of quality services that address our clients' mission. Mr. Rudd provides guidance and direction in all contractual negotiations and actively participates in business development efforts related to CRP's growth.

Bobby W. Austin, Ph.D. - Dr. Austin is a former foundation president, a university vice president, expert on American culture, editor and author. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. His 1996 report for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Repairing the Breach, was described by Washington Post columnist Bill Raspberry as the, "plan to save America." In the mid-1970s, he founded and edited the URBAN LEAGUE REVIEW, for the National Urban League, one of the nation's first policy journals devoted to policy issues affecting African Americans. He currently holds the General Hal G. Moore Chair on Contemplative Leadership at the Merton Institute in Louisville, Ky. As a cultural policy expert, Dr. Austin has served as special consultant on American Culture to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In the field of higher education, he served as the director of educational policy for the Board of Trustees of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). In that position, he helped to craft and develop policy which led to the consolidation of all postsecondary education in Washington, DC. He is also the author of The Acacia Strategy (2010), an innovative sustainability plan for African American Public Higher Education in the 21st Century, which he wrote for the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. As a consultant to the Thurgood Marshall Fund, he continues to lead the development of an online education think tank for all public HBCUs. He earned a B.A. degree in economics and sociology from Western Kentucky University, M.A. from Fisk University and Ph.D. from Canada's McMaster University. He has a post graduate diploma in educational management from Harvard University.

Shamai Carter, M.S. - Ms. Carter, a seasoned CRP project manager, has a decade of experience directing large-scale Federal logistics and meeting management projects. She successfully balances her time and attention among several contracts primarily aimed at ensuring client satisfaction. She also has broad-based experience in budget development, work plan development, database development and management, and staff and content experts supervision. Ms. Carter is highly competent in serving as the senior CRP's quality control monitor ensuring client satisfaction. Other areas of experience and skills Ms. Carter has include: working with web masters; technical computer troubleshooting; and webinar/webcast planning and management. She continues to receive verbal and written commendations for outstanding work from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) contracts and other clients. Ms. Carter is the recipient of a B.B.A. degree (with honors) in computer and information systems science from the University of the District of Columbia and an honors M.S. graduate in computer information resource management from the University of Maryland.

Conway Downing, Jr., J.D. - Mr. Downing is a seasoned business veteran, legal adviser, strategic development analyst, and health policy and small business advocate. In the 1970s, he founded and organized a community development corporation. He has also served as general counsel to a community hospital; an executive vice president and general counsel of a hospital/nursing home contract management firm; and has held both the positions of executive director and president of the National Association of Health Services Executives, the nation's leading advocacy and professional organization of minority health care administrators. He founded Parity, Inc., a tax-exempt, public-interest litigation organization; and Tidewater Dominion Small Business Lending Company, one of only 14 grandfathered, non-bank lending entities licensed and authorized by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to originate, sell, and service SBA-guaranteed loans. A graduate of Phillips Academy, Mr. Downing obtained his B.A. degree in government from Harvard College and J.D. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar.

Carmelita Grady, Ph.D. - Dr. Grady is an evaluator, researcher and writer whose professional career in government, academic, and nonprofit sectors spans more than two decades. She has served as the acting associate director of the National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Co-Investigator for the Tuskegee University's National Center for Bioethics in Healthcare, and principal investigator of the Disability Research Institute at The University of Illinois. She is the author of an important study, A Qualitative Methodology for Examining the Ticket to Work Program Among African American Disabled in Chicago, IL. She is the founder of a quarterly news journal that provides a vehicle for the communication and dissemination of policy, program, and practice issues affecting minority health practitioners and others with an interest in minority health. Dr. Grady has a proven track record in research design and qualitative data collection, program planning and development, training and technical assistance, technical writing, and data analysis. She has shared her expertise with a number of community-based organizations, health centers, public health departments, and academic institutions to help them identify and evaluate effective approaches and explore new pathways to improved health for racial and ethnic minority communities. She has developed, implemented, and evaluated several national community outreach models designed to increase awareness of strategies that help prevent and treat selected chronic diseases. She has also planned and conducted health education, health promotion, and health screening activities in rural and urban communities nationwide; and led teams of emerging and established researchers in the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of programs targeting behavioral health.

Jennifer S. Johnson Ragins, M.S. - Ms. Ragins, whose area of specialization is in health and human services, provides research analysis and technical support to a wide range of CRP clients. She has over 25 years of public and private sector experience in her field, serving as a policy advisor to two former District of Columbia mayors and to the Director of the Washington, D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS). During her DHS tenure, Ms. Ragins provided policy leadership for the implementation of the District's Turning Points Program, an integrated school-based service system for youth. Prior to joining CRP, she served as the school health policy officer for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Among her many accomplishments at DCPS, Ms. Ragins received honorary recognition for her role in developing the school system's blood-borne pathogens policy and influenza pandemic plan. She received additional recognition for her work on compliance management for DCPS's $20 million school health system, cooperative agreements, and student epidemiological studies. She also guided legislative efforts leading to the implementation of school-based health centers and increasing the provision of primary health care to indigent and foreign-born DCPS students. Ms. Ragins earned her B.S. degree in urban planning from the University of the District of Columbia, and she holds a M.S. degree in policy and administration from Columbia University's School of Social Work.

Sandra Owens Lawson, Ph.D., M.S.W. - Dr. Lawson is a licensed social worker with 14 years of demonstrated and outstanding policy and programmatic experience at SAMHSA/CSAP and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Prior to joining CRP, she served as the acting director of the University of the District of Columbia's (UDC) Counseling and Student Development Center. In that role, she supervised licensed clinical psychologists, master's-degree level counselors, and psychiatrists. She also served as the University liaison/project director for the UDC Minority Education Initiative program. In that role, her accomplishments included developing and implementing the program's project/work plan, recruiting and training 30 peer educators, attending grantee and evaluation workshops on evidence-based research and referral in collaboration with community agencies, and developing other educational and training materials. She additionally taught courses in human growth and development policy, and cultural competence, and trained certified drug abuse counselors while at UDC. She also served as an Associate Professor in the George Mason University's School of Social Work. She holds a B.A. degree from Fisk University, M.S.W. degree from Howard University, and Ph.D. with a specialization in health care administration and health behaviors from Walden University.

Edward Wofford, B.A. - Mr. Wofford has 30 years of demonstrated experience in proposal development and in the conduct and management of literature searches, literature reviews, research analysis and synthesis, document development, meeting summary preparation, and health program evaluation. He is adept in documenting the processes, content, and outcomes of meetings in multiple formats. He specializes in the preparation of technical reports, products, papers, materials, and other products spanning multiple disciplines, including behavioral health. A sampling of products Mr. Wofford has prepared for CRP include a monograph on the Iraq-SAMHSA initiative; policy academy planning reports for North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah; and policy academy evaluation reports on returning veterans and their families, and co-occuring disorders. He also prepared meeting summaries for the planning committee mechanisms at which the successful implementation of the 2007 Tribal Policy Academy and the 2008 Policy Academy on Returning Veterans were conceptualized and orchestrated. Prior to joining CRP, Mr. Wofford served as director of development for a national nonprofit association and served 13 years as a senior management consultant at a former Bethesda, Maryland-based Federal contracting firm. He is the recipient of a B.A. degree in political science from Howard University and has undertaken graduate study in research methods at American University.