Resume

Crystal Nurazura Hall

Strategy, Operations & Innovation  ·  Pittsburgh, PA

Strategy and operations leader with 15+ years building teams, systems, and operating models that enable organizations to make better decisions, drive execution, and scale. Experience spans startups, AI, emerging technology, higher education, and mission-driven organizations. Known for bringing structure to ambiguity, translating strategy into execution, and helping leaders navigate growth and complexity. Draws on experience as a founder and operator to combine strategic thinking with empathy, sound judgment, and practical execution.

Areas of Expertise

Strategic Planning & Execution Cross-Functional Coordination Program & Project Management Business Operations Organizational Design Process Improvement Data-Driven Decision Making Budget Management Financial Planning & Analysis Fundraising Change Management Technology Adoption Product Strategy Go-to-Market Customer Discovery Business & People Operations Stakeholder Management Team Building & Development Business Development & Experimentation

Tools & Technology

Project & Operations: ClickUp · Jira · Trello · Airtable · Slack · Google Workspace · Microsoft 365 · Notion · Proxima
Data & Analytics: Excel · Google Sheets · Power BI · Kibana/Elasticsearch
CRM & Finance: HubSpot · Salesforce · Zoho · Bloomerang · QuickBooks
Design, Web & Prototyping: Canva · Adobe Creative Suite · Squarespace · Shopify · HTML/CSS · Replit
AI & Automation: Claude · ChatGPT · Gemini · NotebookLM · Zapier
LMS & Education Systems: TalentLMS · Absorb LMS · Blackboard · Jenzabar

Professional Experience

Fractional Operations & Strategy Partner 2021–Present
Maven Consulting Co., Pittsburgh, PA
  • Partner with startups, corporations, and nonprofit clients to develop strategy, build operating frameworks, improve processes, and lead product development.
  • Embedded as Head of Strategy and Operations for a dual-use robotics company (defense/industrial), owning business development, FP&A, people, and program management functions.
    • Federal Contracting & Proposal Development: Structured an 18-month, $3M federal DOW/OIB subcontract proposal with $750K cost share and headcount pipeline to expand 5 new positions.
    • Fundraising & Financial Modeling: Rebuilt financial model, investor data room, pitch deck materials, and fundraising narrative that supported a $1.5M bridge round and $3M seed raise in flight.
    • Talent Acquisition & Hiring: Owned the full hiring framework for three positions: refining job descriptions, developing technical interview questions, designing working assessments, overseeing recruitment and screening, and building custom landing pages.
    • Program Management: Built and owned program management for two active DOE-sponsored programs, projected resource allocation and bill-down timelines, and managed relationships with external partners.
  • Embedded as EIR/CEO-for-hire to run a corporate partner's skunkworks healthcare and wellness project in a target market of 500,000 users.
    • Zero-to-Launch Operations: Built the operations framework, brand identity, and team to take the service from concept to launch, across web and mobile, in under two weeks.
    • Business Experimentation: Broke internal records for business experiments, executing 1–3 tests per week and distilling learnings into decisions and pivots.
  • Embedded as Head of Development for Scholar and a Dream, a NYC-based nonprofit serving at-risk youth, leading development and grant strategy for their Project Dream scholarship program.
    • Development Strategy: Built a development strategy including funder personas, a grant prospecting framework, organizational boilerplate for grant applications, and sourced academic research to support the program's curriculum.
    • Financial Modeling: Built a program financial model including a donor-facing Grant Impact Calculator, a 5-year growth projection plan, and a growth modeling tool for cohort expansion.
  • Human Evaluation & Research Operations: Designed and managed human evaluation operations for an IRB-approved AI-enabled community healthcare product, recruiting evaluators/users and synthesizing business learnings.
  • Product & Usability Review: Conducted a usability review of a peer-to-peer logistics platform, evaluating functionality and delivery workflows and recommending product enhancements and feature priorities.
Strategy Lead, Founding Team 2025–2026 (Currently Advising)
Sensify Inc., Pittsburgh, PA
  • Customer Discovery: Led customer discovery through the NSF I-Corps program, validating market needs across liminal spaces, airports, universities, and municipal sectors while refining value propositions.
  • Product Strategy: Translated user insights into an iterative product roadmap, guiding product direction and laying the foundation for a SaaS-based revenue model.
  • Team Leadership: Directed multidisciplinary teams spanning engineering, design, and data science to develop and test MVP devices and supporting data architecture.
  • 2025 Northwestern University VentureCat finalist and Sustainability Track winner.
Chief Operating Officer 2018–2022
The Laundry Chute, a CSC ServiceWorks Company
  • Operations Leadership: Led operations for a tech-enabled peer-to-peer college laundry company through rapid growth, acquisition, and pandemic-related business pivots.
  • Growth & Scaling: Scaled to 15 active locations across 8 campuses, with a pipeline of 20 additional locations representing 200,000+ prospective customers.
  • Cross-Functional Operations: Directed pricing, staffing, logistics, partnerships, and service delivery decisions during periods of significant operational uncertainty.
  • Product Management: Managed product roadmap from requirements to release, balancing business, customer, and usability priorities.
  • People Operations: Built and scaled recruiting, onboarding, training, and people operations systems supporting a distributed workforce across multiple campuses during rapid growth.
  • Market Expansion: Set strategic direction for campus expansion, identifying and prioritizing target schools; personally led site visits and relationship-building with campus leadership, and built a pipeline of 20 additional campuses before departure.
  • Team Development: Coached two ops leads into managers who then oversaw the remaining ops-lead team, scaling the structure to roughly 350 peer-to-peer contractors across 15 locations and 8 campuses.
Founder and CEO 2017–2020
Post 9 LLC, Pittsburgh, PA
  • Founded a postpartum concierge support and subscription box service for new mothers, building a tech stack and curated product line to close a gap in postpartum care.
  • Fundraising & Business Development: Executed a 6-month GTM strategy; raised $35,000+ in non-dilutive funding and incubator sponsorship, and demonstrated growth of 750% over 5 months from pre-launch to launch.
  • Product Development: Designed proprietary products and sourced manufacturing on- and off-shore; built out the company's Shopify e-commerce site and mobile application alongside a full-stack developer.
  • Team Building: Cultivated strategic partnerships and recruited a co-founder, full-stack engineer, and content & marketing assistant to support service launch and delivery.
Associate Director 2015–2016
Made Right Here, Pittsburgh, PA
  • Program Leadership: Directed STEM career-focused Maker Professional programs supporting 100+ at-risk youth and adults through apprenticeship and advanced manufacturing training.
  • Program Development & Fundraising: Created three youth programs and their KPIs, raising more than $175,000 to fund them.
  • Workforce Pathways: Opened pathways for at-risk teens and adults into externships at local robotics companies, trade apprenticeships, and careers in technology manufacturing.
Maker in Residence & Organizer 2014–2015
Carnegie Mellon University, White House OSTP & White House Maker Faire
  • Coalition Building: Led and organized the White House Maker Faire University Initiative, developing group info sessions with the OSTP and 11 core institutions to build enthusiasm and gain institutional commitments to the Maker movement.
  • Program Growth: Exceeded the goal of 100 supporting universities, garnering provost and president-level support from over 150 universities in less than 3 months.

Additional Experience

Board & Volunteering

Education, Training & Certifications

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