Leo D’Cruz
Cincinnati, Ohio & Washington, D.C.
Twenty years delivering strategic counsel to boards, foundations, and principals through their most consequential decisions. Architect of a $1 billion regional philanthropic initiative; long-term advisor to a $270 million endowed foundation. Co-founded and led an 18-person full-service design and communications firm for eight years; secured and stewarded government and foundation grants and contracts from $50K to $1.6M. Most at home where complex evidence must become a clear decision: translating research, data, and competing interests into judgment upon which people can reliably act.
Selected Experience
Founder | Leo D’Cruz & Co.
- Advises executives, boards, and foundations, including institutions stewarding nearly $200 million in charitable assets, on governance, organizational strategy, executive leadership, and institutional effectiveness.
- Standing counsel to the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, from its chief executive to directors across the organization, on team dynamics, strategic process, and positioning.
- Aligned the Federation’s planning and development teams under its new structure: nine months training the directors to manage up, down, and across, until both teams worked on their own.
- Aligned the newly created operations team with all major departments including marketing, development, planning, finance, and JCRC. Designed and facilitated org-wide listening and findings sessions to establish priority work areas and create collaborative processes.
Co-Founder & Managing Partner | Box Kite Strategy Group
- Built a referral-based strategic advisory practice serving foundations, nonprofits, and government agencies, growing through earned trust and repeat engagement.
- Architect of a $1 billion regional philanthropic investment initiative, conceived and designed for the Haile Foundation. The Greater Cincinnati Foundation subsequently adopted the blueprint and restructured its staff to build and implement it.
- Served as long-term counsel to institutional funders, including the $270 million endowed Haile Foundation.
- Led development of a $1.5M federally funded HIV education, engagement, and treatment strategy under the national Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, from opportunity identification through award; co-designed the program with Hamilton County Public Health and stood up its dedicated office and staff.
- Conceived and designed the county’s public State of HIV report after years of championing the data collection behind it, translating surveillance data on incidence, viral suppression, and disparities in care for public audiences; presented components to federal public-health oversight officials.
- Engaged by Groundwork Ohio River Valley’s founding executive directors to co-create the organization’s three-year strategic plan and coach its executives through adoption.
- Guided the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati through a multi-year, organization-wide restructuring, advising the board and executive team on structure and sequencing while coaching leaders through the change.
Co-Founder & Chief Strategic Officer | Reverb
- Built and led an 18-person full-service design and communications firm working at the intersection of art, public policy, and community engagement, with responsibility for strategy, team development, budgets, and client and funder relationships.
- Directed a $1.6M statewide public health campaign for the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Conceived and led original primary research, with state IRB approval, to generate baseline data before any creative work began; the campaign was then designed on that evidence.
- Directed Stand Up to Suicide (2019), a statewide prevention pilot with behavioral-health experts; named, branded, and drove the campaign behind 1,665 QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) certifications across 25 suburban and rural counties.
- Selected by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s office during the COVID-19 crisis to guide public communications balancing safety with the need to live and work in the world: messaging built on evolving evidence under real uncertainty.
- Conceived and executed Cities for DACA, a national advocacy campaign engaging 200 U.S. mayors, Republicans and Democrats alike, and immigrant advocates across the country.
- Made the case for a standing immigrant-inclusion institution at the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, then named Cincinnati Compass (2016), set its communications guide, and wrote its launch content; today a collaboration of more than 65 community partners.
Senior Advisor, Jewish Engagement | Biden for President
- Primary relationship manager for Jewish voters in Ohio, earning trust with community leaders and activating credible messengers across civic and philanthropic leadership.
Deputy Political Director (Ohio) | Hillary for America
- Directed statewide stakeholder engagement across civic, faith, labor, and community constituencies, holding and synthesizing context across hundreds of relationships.
Invited Advisor, DACA Design Consultation | The White House
- One of a national group of immigration experts, advocates, and attorneys convened within days of the June 15, 2012 announcement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, during the sixty-day window in which USCIS had to make the program operational, to advise on its scope and structure: what belonged in it, what could not lawfully be put in it, and how it should be framed to the country. Argued the case across hours at the table with USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas, later Secretary of Homeland Security, and Felicia Escobar of the White House Domestic Policy Council, later Special Assistant to the President for Immigration Policy.
Strategic Communications & Public Affairs Advisor | Independent
- Public-facing strategy across presidential, statewide, and municipal cycles since 2009: speechwriting, debate preparation, and candidate coaching. Senior strategist on Ohio’s Issue 1 (November 2023), the constitutional amendment establishing a right to reproductive freedom, which a broad coalition carried to a 57–43 statewide win.
- Principal Cincinnati advocate, pro bono, in the 2010 deportation case of Bernard Pastor, an 18-year-old honors graduate detained after a minor traffic accident: reached a family that trusted no one, recruited the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association to represent him on the same terms, and worked the case alongside a community campaign in Reading until ICE granted deferred action and released him after thirty days in federal detention. Accompanied him to Washington the next morning for the Senate’s DREAM Act cloture vote, which failed by five.
- Earlier roles include Adjunct Professor of Sociology (Cincinnati State, 2010–2012).
Field Researcher | George Mason Project on Immigration
- Co-designed a multi-method study of immigration attitudes: survey questions for an ethno-survey of randomized households, the IRB application and its addendums, and interview components with day laborers and with immigrant women facing trauma and healthcare barriers, and supervised statewide Virginia surveys of immigrant and political sentiment.
- Personally collected nearly a third of the team’s 100+ door-to-door oral histories, in immigrant households and in the homes of residents with strong anti-immigrant views, earning candor in both as a Latino researcher; layered the component studies to cross-validate findings against one another and against national and regional economic data.
- At the day laborer site in Manassas, Virginia, a worker stopped appearing. Found him at home with a concussion and his face badly beaten by an employer, persuaded him to report it despite the risk it carried for him, documented the injuries, and carried the case to police and prosecutors, translating throughout. Supplied the prosecution with photographic evidence and with research citations on employer abuse of workers drawn from the thesis fieldwork, and stayed with him through trial. The jury convicted; the employer was sentenced to 90 days in jail and ordered to pay three months of back wages, medical expenses, and six months of wages forward.
Board & Civic Leadership
Chair, Government Relations Committee | Cincinnati Jewish Community Relations Council
- Advise board and executive leadership on government relations and public policy; guide the legislative agenda and relationships with elected officials and public agencies.
Board Member | Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio
- Governance for one of the region’s largest safety-net clinical providers, serving 17,000+ patients across nearly 29,000 visits annually; served on the strategic planning and board search committees.
Board Member | Corporation for Findlay Market
- Fiduciary oversight and strategic planning for the development corporation anchoring Over-the-Rhine’s economy, including Findlay Kitchen, the region’s principal food-business incubator, whose founders are 60–70 percent women, people of color, and immigrants.
Vice Chair (Mayor-appointed) | Cincinnati Citizen Complaint Authority
- Civilian oversight of critical police–community incident investigations.
Vice President & National Civil Rights Committee | LULAC
- League of United Latin American Citizens; represented Latino communities in national policy discussions, including the White House’s inaugural Hispanic Policy Forum.
Fellow | Cohen Family Leaders in Light Institute
Member, The 50 | Contemporary Arts Center
- Giving circle that made admission free; gave, recruited fellow donors, and helped make the citywide public case.
Press & Public Speaking
Featured | Cincinnati Magazine
- “The trick is to enter into a conversation that’s already happening, and to do so with grace.”
- “There’s so much going on in the world that isn’t right. Creatives have always been among the most well-positioned social critics… If you’re a creative, you had better figure out something to say about the world.”
- As the magazine described it, Leo is “the wordsmith,” coordinating the studio and gallery based on what’s happening in the world outside.
Featured | The Cincinnati Enquirer
- Profiled as one of five Cincinnatians on the front page of the Enquirer’s Forum section for the national One Nation series: “Leo Pierson D’Cruz on crusading for change.”
- “I’m just listening and letting folks talk and they start hearing themselves.”
Forty Under 40 | Cincinnati Business Courier
Addy Award | Reverb, for Cincinnati Museum Center
- For Dream Land, the studio’s Art Deco sculptural rendering of the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky skylines at Holiday Junction; work noted that December in Smithsonian Magazine’s national roundup of holiday displays.
Featured | The Cincinnati Enquirer
Featured | Cincinnati Magazine
- Longform account of a DREAM Act deportation case and the Cincinnati advocacy behind it; the magazine identifies Leo, writing as Leo Pierson, as “Bernard’s principal advocate in Cincinnati.”
- “You’ve seen who I am. You know who I am. With all due respect, this is my country as much as it is yours.” Bernard Pastor to Senator George Voinovich, ninety minutes before the Senate vote.
- “They’ve grown up in America, with the same ideals and values as anyone else… They’re not apologizing for being here. They have nothing to apologize for.” David Leopold, then president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Interviewed | La Vanguardia Hoy
Interviewed | BBC / PRI’s The World
On-Air Debate | 700WLW, Cincinnati
Expert Testimony
- Testified on immigration policy before the Ohio legislature (SB 35, 2010; finance committee budget testimony, 2011) and before local governments in Ohio and Kentucky weighing immigration resolutions (Fairfield City Council; Boone County Board of Supervisors).
Selected Talks & Trainings
- “Großraumpolitik: The Curious Case of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran” · Invited Lecture, Manley Burke; Cincinnati, February 2026
- “Being a Social Entrepreneur in a Rapidly Shifting Global Environment” · Invited Lecturer, Power Politics and Publics honors course, Xavier University; January 2026
- “Nuts and Bolts of Progressive Framing and Messaging” · Invited Trainer, New Leaders Institute; Cincinnati, 2021
- “Expanding Creative Placemaking to Digital Landscapes” · Invited Trainer, National Placemaking Summit; Phoenix, 2019
- “The Art of Inclusion: Reframing D&I within Art Institutions” · Invited Trainer, SmArt Summit; Cincinnati, 2017
- “State of Presidential Politics” · Speaker, University of Cincinnati, 2016
- “Intersections of Immigration Law and Reproductive Justice” · Invited Panelist with the Hon. Jennifer Branch and Anne Lucas, University of Cincinnati College of Law; March 2016
- “How’d We Get Here? A Commentary on the Politics of Immigration” · Invited Speaker, University of Cincinnati College of Law, November 2011
- “Enrique’s Journey: An Evening with Sonia Nazario” · Invited Panelist with Pulitzer Prize winner Sonia Nazario and Dr. Kristine Suna-Koro, Xavier University; October 2011
Education
MA, Economic Sociology (focus: democratic resilience) | George Mason University
BA, Foreign Policy (focus: Latin America) | The Pennsylvania State University