Crystal Williams’ Bio

Crystal Williams believes that education, art and design, and commitments to equity and justice are essential to transforming our society. For more than two decades, her work to elevate and amplify the multiplicity of human experience in higher education has galvanized the imagination about who we have been and who we can become.

The daughter of an educator and a musician, Williams was raised in Detroit, MI and Madrid, Spain, where she was immersed in arts and culture from an early age. Today, when not on campus or connecting with RISD alumni and friends of RISD around the globe, one can often find her wandering art galleries or museums, at live theater—one of her first loves—reading or watching British murder mysteries and spending time enjoying the company of beloved friends, both human and canine. Williams earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University. In April 2022, she became the 18th President of Rhode Island School of Design.

LEADERSHIP

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Williams began her academic career at Reed College where she served as professor of English (2000-11) and dean (2011-13). There she gained a reputation as a strong advocate for faculty, working with colleagues to make Reed more equitable, diverse and inclusive, which led to her appointment as the college’s inaugural dean for institutional diversity. Through a keen understanding of the power of the liberal arts to uniquely elevate and magnify the  interdependence between ideas and action, Williams directed several faculty-driven initiatives to create cohesive structures that would encourage and support a greater sense of inclusion at Reed. Williams continued this work of creating programs and strategies in support of diversity and inclusivity at Bates College, where she served as associate vice president for strategic initiatives, professor of English and senior advisor to the president from 2013-17.

An authority on diversity in the arts and higher education, Williams regularly advises senior leaders, organizations and colleges across the nation on creating and sustaining more equitable and inclusive systems for leadership development, recruitment, retention, campus environments, organizational development and capacity building. In 2017, she became the inaugural vice president and associate provost for community & inclusion at Boston University as well as a professor of English. Her leadership, vision, management and strategic direction supported communities of faculty, staff and students within the university’s 17 schools and colleges. To foster a deeper sense of unity among individuals from underrepresented communities and their allies, Williams also oversaw the creation of Boston University’s employee resource groups.

“Designers and artists are uniquely positioned to help solve humanity's most intractable problems. Not only do we enable, empower and illuminate the human experience, we imagine and enact it differently.”

 

Williams regularly engages with members of arts communities, having served on multiple boards and panels, including the Oregon Arts Commission as one of nine appointed commissioners; Maine Humanities Council as a board member; the Oregon Poet Laureate Selection Committee; the 2015 Donald Hall Poetry Prize panel; and the editorial board for The Writer’s Chronicle among others. In 2016, Williams joined Ford Foundation President Darren Walker in a conversation about cultural equity, part of a programmatic collaboration between the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA). She has also served as moderator for multiple arts-related conversations, most recently, “The Story of Us: Women Design Voices on The Pleasures —and Power— of Rising Together” at Design Miami and “Conversations | Premiere Artist Talk: María Magdalena Campos-Pons” with Franklin Sirmans at Art Basel Miami Beach.
 

ADVOCACY

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President Williams brings deep experience in creating and implementing systems and structures to support more diverse, equitable and inclusive learning environments, and cultivating and developing the potential of all students, staff and faculty. At RISD, she is prioritizing opportunities to amplify the world’s most promising and impactful creatives by increasing student financial aid and scholarships. Her aspiration, to ensure that any student with the talent and will can study at RISD if they choose, has led to a 3.3% increase in student financial aid for the 23-24 academic year, and 31% of this year's incoming class receiving RISD Aid, including 100% of students with financial need receiving aid.

Williams has also focused on improving the campus climate, leveraging the community’s collective knowledge and influence to spur principled progress and to foster a greater sense of connection. She recently launched an initiative to provide a comprehensive examination of student wellness, including the degree to which the living, learning and working environments for RISD students are aligned with the institution’s stated values concerning their physical, emotional and mental well-being. She has also recently committed to ensuring post-graduate success for RISD students. In addition, initiatives are underway to ensure that faculty continue to evolve their teaching in ways that reflect the world’s great art and design traditions and cultures; consider environmentally sustainable approaches, and integrate and capitalize on emerging technologies; and to foster a stronger sense of belonging among all members of the RISD community.
 

ARTISTRY

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Williams is an award-winning poet and essayist whose work regularly appears in leading journals and magazines. She has published four collections of poems and is the recipient of many artistic fellowships, grants and honors, including a MacDowell fellowship; an appointment as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of University Writing at DePauw University; a Master Poet residency at Indiana University; a recipient of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize; and a Barbara Deming/Money for Women artist grant, among others.

Williams’s poem Elegy for Us, written in response to Faith Ringgold’s 1967 painting American People Series #20: Die, was commissioned by and is part of MoMA’s Poetry Project, where writers were invited to contribute poems in response to works in the museum’s permanent collection. Williams was also one of 10 poets commissioned by MoMA to write poems (Double Helix, Year After Year We Visited Alabama) as a part of an exhibition featuring Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series. She is currently at work on a memoir.