For 17 years, Craig Bowman and his firm, Common Ground Consulting, LLC™ have been providing world-class consulting services for community-based, national, and international nonprofit/NGO organizations. As a leading social sector futurist, Craig has spent his career developing a philosophy of learning and management that harnesses passion as a bridge between human potential and social responsibility. He provides valuable advocacy, management and fund development training; offers executive-level one-on-one coaching and board development; addresses diversity and multicultural organizational development issues; teaches beginners and advanced courses in facilitation skills and curriculum development; and specializes in the creation and implementation of youth and community development programming strategies. He is an expert in organizational assessment, development, and management issues; and has provided on-site technical assistance and capacity building to social sector organizations in the U.S. and abroad.

Craig’s efforts have largely centered on organizational development consulting and the design and delivery of high-quality, interactive, non-formal education and training. The majority of this work has focused on assisting organizations and businesses in developing and implementing mission critical goals and the systems necessary for high productivity and the efficient use of resources. He is also an internationally-recognized expert on youth policy, youth development, and youth health issues (particularly HIV/AIDS prevention).

Craig currently spends about one-third of his time providing civil society and NGO sector-development support to USAID-funded projects throughout Eastern Europe and additional consulting services to NGOs throughout Western Europe. In the United States, he has major contracts providing technical assistance to Department of Education-funded youth mentoring programs and a variety of other federal and non-federal programs.

His client portfolio includes more than 100 organizations, government agencies, and students, faculty, and administrators from more than 200 colleges and universities in the United States and Europe. All of the high-quality, culturally-competent, interactive trainings that he provides to clients are uniquely developed to meet specific goals and objectives. Whether the need is for a two-hour training module, a plenary speech, a two-week complete training solution, or a long-term consulting relationship, each experience is developed using his state-of-the-art Strategic Design System™ guaranteeing that he will deliver on each group’s critical goals.

In 2000, Craig became the Executive Director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC), an organization representing more than 165 youth-serving agencies across the country and providing support and technical assistance to more than 500 others. In joining NYAC, Craig brought more than five years of direct service experience having worked previously as the Executive Director of NYAC member, the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL), a DC-based social service agency committed to providing at-risk young people with the services they need and the opportunities they deserve. Craig has also worked as an Adjunct Professor at American University in Washington, DC, where he taught non-formal education—curriculum/training design and facilitation skills— to graduate students in the sociology department’s International Training and Education Program (ITEP) for five years.

Previously, Craig has served as the National Education and Training Director for Public Allies, where he was responsible for the development and implementation of their outcomes-based training curriculum and where he pioneered his innovative Infinity Training Model™. While there, he also served as the youngest member of the Corporation for National Service's Summer of Service Design Team, which launched AmeriCorps in 1993. Before joining Public Allies, Craig served for two years as the Executive Director of the American Association of University Students (AAUS), and as the architect of the nation’s leading collegiate diversity initiative.

A 1990 graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, he has served on the National Council for Youth Policy of the National Network for Youth, the Board of the Washington Council of Agencies, the District of Columbia Mayor’s Task Force on LGBT Issues, and was the editorial board chair of Who Cares magazine. He was a member of the Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines Development Committee for the National Association of Juvenile and Family Court Judges; a member of the Model Standards Project, a collaboration between Legal Services for Children and NCLR; a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of G&L Issues in Education; a member of the Board of Directors of Mobilizing America’s Youth; a member of the National Advisory Council for Curriculum Development for the National Mentoring Center; and was a part of the National Advisory Council for the Removing Barriers to Health Care Initiative of the Mautner Project. He is a past member of the boards of NYAC, BreakAway, the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness, and Empty the Shelters. He is also a founding member and past chair of Young People for National Service.

Among many others, Craig has served as a consultant for organizations including the Case and Kettering Foundations, the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), Youth Service America, the Corporation for National Service, COOL, the Maryland Governor’s Commission on Service, the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, the Points of Light Foundation, the Institute for Policy Studies, Public Allies, the San Francisco Urban Service Project, the National Wildlife Federation, GreenCorps, the Center for Environmental Citizenship, Youth Vote 2000, the White House, the Department of Justice's OJJDP, the Departments of State, Education, and DHHS, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, EMT Associates, AmeriCorps, and students, faculty and administrators from more than 200 colleges and universities in the U.S. and dozens of NGOs abroad.