Sheila Crowley was the President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition from December 1998 to April 2016. Dr. Crowley joined the staff of the National Low Income Housing Coalition in December 1998. Under her leadership the Coalition has grown from a staff of five to a staff of seventeen. She organized the campaign in 2002 to establish an endowment in honor of NLIHC founder Cushing N. Dolbeare, which today supports the policy advocacy program of the coalition. In December 2009, NLIHC received an anonymous gift of $5,000,000 to further endow its advocacy work.
She frequently is called to testify before Congressional committees on the full range of federal policy issues. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Housing Trust, Enterprise Community Partners, the Technical Assistance Collaborative, the National Housing Conference, and the Coalition on Human Needs. She is also an adjunct faculty member for the VCU School of Social Work and for George Mason University Department of Social Work, teaching social policy, social justice, policy advocacy, and community and organizational practice.
In 2010, Dr. Crowley received a Rockefeller Foundation sponsored residence at the Bellagio Center in Italy to engage in research on how to reform the mortgage interest deduction. In recognition of her leadership of the National Housing Trust Fund campaign, she received the John W. Macy Award from the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the Housing Leadership Award from the National Low Income Housing Coalition in 2009, as well as the Special Leadership Award from the National Housing Law Project and the Champion in Supportive Housing Public Policy Award from the Corporation for Supportive Housing in 2008.
She was the 1996-97 Social Work Congressional Fellow, where she served on the Democratic staff of the Housing Subcommittee of the United States Senate Banking Committee. Dr. Crowley came to NLIHC after two decades in Richmond, Virginia in organizational leadership, direct service, policy advocacy, and scholarship. She has worked in staff, board, and consulting roles with organizations that focus on homeless services, family housing, AIDS housing, housing for people with disabilities, senior housing, and services to battered women and victims of rape.
From 1984-1992, she was the Executive Director of The Daily Planet, a multipurpose homeless service and advocacy organization in Richmond. She was the founding director in 1979 of the YWCA Women’s Advocacy Program in Richmond, the shelter and service program for battered women and their children. She is a founding member of the Virginians Against Domestic Violence, the Greater Richmond Coalition for the Homeless, and the Richmond Better Housing Coalition.
Dr. Crowley is a social worker with a bachelor’s (1976), master’s (1978), and Ph.D. (1998) from the School of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She has received numerous awards from VCU School of Social Work, including the Making A Difference Award in 2010, the Elaine Z. Rothberg Award for Outstanding Doctoral Student in 1998, the Alumni Star Award in 1998, and the Alumnus of the Year in 1992.
She is married to Kent Willis, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia. They have two daughters and five grandchildren.