Disrupt the status quo, reconnect to your values, and embody an inclusive brand and leadership style
ALIGNED is my signature 1:1 coaching program for high-achieving, values-driven leaders and entrepreneurs who crave clarity, confidence, and integration in their leadership approach and personal brand.
I have capacity for only five ALIGNED leadership and personal branding consultant clients at a time, so I recommend applying as soon as you’re ready.
ALIGNED is for those who seek alignment between their external presence and internal values
Including leaders within organizations and entrepreneurs running their own business
SPEAKERS ✦ INDEPENDENT CONSULTANTS ✦ COACHES ✦ MARKETERS ✦ CEOS ✦ WEDDING PROFESSIONALS ✦ NONPROFIT LEADERS ✦ FOUNDERS ✦ PROFESSORS AND DEPARTMENT CHAIRS ✦ CREATORS ✦ COMMUNITY CURATORS ✦ CREATIVES
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Lead with more awareness, inclusivity, and accountability as an ally and advocate for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks
When you don’t have complete clarity in your values, it’s hard to know how to show up as an ally in a genuine way, as a leader and in your brand messaging.
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Feel fully seen and supported to lead confidently from your lived experience as a BIPOC or LGBTQ+ leader
When you don’t feel able to fully own or express your identity in professional spaces, you might instinctively hold yourself back both in leadership and your brand presence.
Gently, I want to tell you: any mismatch between who you are and how you’re showing up is felt.
Wavering in decision-making.
Shying away from bigger roles to play.
Downplaying your power.
Flattening who you really are.
Staying silent or saying words that aren’t yours.
Your community, your team, and your audience feel it.
They need you to be brave and be you.
You need you.
This is why ALIGNED exists.
ABOUT ALIGNED
Using The Aligned Values Framework®, ALIGNED is a six-month 1:1 coaching mentorship designed to give you the tools you need to confidently lead with your values, whether you own your business or lead in an organization.
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This work starts with developing internal clarity. We explore shared language to understand how your lived experience has influenced your relationship to identity, privilege, and values.
In this first month, we start building your solid internal foundation to clarify what you truly value.
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Description With your values taking shape, we start extending your foundation outward, toward others, reflecting on questions of connection and belonging.
What creates a feeling of belonging for you and those you engage with? How can you be brave to create more human-centered connections? text goes here
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Building on your work so far, we create your anchor, or root.
A written “source of truth” you can return to when you’re not sure what to do: your core values, commitments to others, and beliefs.
This isn’t surface level. We dig deep so that you feel confident in your decision-making and build stronger, more aligned relationships.
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Now crystal clear in your values, commitments, and beliefs, we look at what might be in the way of truly living them out: bias.
We all have bias — on a personal, professional, and community level. Identifying your bias without judgment clears the path to leading through your values.
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Putting everything into action, you explore what it’s like to embody your values as a leader.
You write your personal mission statement, vision statement, and inclusive philosophy. And we identify any gaps in how you’re currently showing up as a leader and how you want to be — then practice.
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It’s finally time to integrate everything we’ve done together into your external brand.
You create messaging to connect with your ideal community and promote your mission in a way that feels genuinely connected to your core values.
We finish by writing your strong mission, vision, and inclusive brand statement you will use across public-facing channels (either for your company’s brand or your personal brand).
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ALIGNED is paced over six months to help you honor your energy, engage at a sustainable pace, and allow for the space needed for transformation to take root.
Bi-weekly coaching sessions with me (clients often tell me it feels like inclusive leadership “therapy”)*
Slack and Voxer access to ask me questions or seek support in between coaching sessions
Invitation to a community container, where you will be able to connect with past coaching clients doing this work alongside you
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$4,500 ($750/month)
“It is hard to put into words the transformation Crystal helped facilitate and co-create with me both personally and professionally. She is perhaps the most compassionate, transparent, and curious coach I have ever worked with.
Crystal embodies her social justice work and brave leadership and empowers others to do the same by helping clients recognize and align with their values and mission. She is neuroinclusive, accessible, and affirming...so basically, a unicorn...and an angel...and a forever friend-all rolled up into one. I have been changed for good.” —Pasha Marlowe
“The SINGLE BEST THING I did for myself and my business was to work with “brand therapist” Crystal Whiteaker.” —Susan McLeary
*For clarity, I’m not a therapist; this is values-centered coaching.
Past ALIGNED clients have emerged with:
More confident, integrated messaging that attracts like-minded clients and speaks to their values with ease
Website and visuals they created that feel enduring and truly reflective of their values and identity
Transformed confidence, clarity of leadership identity, and alignment between their personal values and business
Organically and intuitively knowing how to show up as a values-aligned leader, in any situation
Hi, I’m Crystal. (She/her)
Leadership Coach and Personal Brand Consultant | Creator of The Aligned Values Framework® | Trauma-Informed | Neurodivergent
This is healing work that is done out of love.
It's not just about building an inclusive, empowered brand. We go deeper than that, because we need to.
Focusing only on the brand or leadership behaviors is an outside-in approach that’s ultimately a band-aid for what you’re really here for: to feel rooted in your values as a leader and a human.
In ALIGNED, we take an inside-out approach. Doing this internal work can feel challenging at times, and that's why having me there to guide and support you matters so much.
I'm not just going to leave you with a bunch of lessons to take in on your own. You'll have access to me for clarification, guidance, and space to ask questions without judgment or shame.
It takes love to do this work. Love for ourselves. Love for our communities. And love for humanity. When we dig in, we disrupt what's familiar to us so we can heal and move forward for the sake of the collective.
By operating from this perspective of love, it becomes more natural to integrate your values and identity into your business, because they will come from within.
I can’t wait to welcome you in.
Client Reflections
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"If I had not worked with Crystal, I would have risked ending up with something that didn’t clearly articulate my values.
Through Crystal’s work, she was able to drill down and really find me. By the time we did the photoshoot, she already had such a deep understanding of me that she knew exactly what kinds of images would truly serve me.
She’s so good at leading you through the process, and on the back end, she’s a beast — a perfectionist in the best way. My bar is really high, and I often find myself redoing what others produce, but not with Crystal. She’s razor-edge sharp and cares about doing things right. She’s also kind, but she doesn’t spare the gold. She makes her values clear and holds that line with integrity."—Author and Speaker, Dr. Portia Preston
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"Crystal is amazing. She asks the hard questions and helps you work through the hard answers.
Crystal understands that inclusion is a necessity for every human to have a voice at the table. She lives her work at the very core of her being and is one of the most genuine people I know. I was able to dive deeper and keep clarifying what is most important to me and that translated to my messaging becoming more clear. Crystal has made me a better human and business owner. I fully recommend Crystal if you're ready to do the work!"
—Kirstie Wheeler, Educational Consultant and Professor at Berklee College of Music
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"Learning about inclusive branding from Crystal has been one of the most eye-opening and empowering experiences I’ve had as an entrepreneur and as a person.
Her core values-based approach helped me crystalize my belief that, as a business owner, you shouldn’t have to choose between making money and doing good. Now, I help other business owners use social media to do both.
Crystal is deeply insightful, always compassionate, and never judgemental. So when it comes to the challenging work of disrupting your own bias, you could not find a better person to guide you. I cannot recommend her enough!"
—Nina Stoller-Lindsey, Social Media and Content Strategist for Mission-Driven Brands
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"Working with Crystal was an incredible experience!
I worked with Crystal on making sure that both my website and the new book I'm writing are inclusive and rooted in my core values. The feedback she provided on both was invaluable to making sure that I'm cultivating safe and welcoming spaces for all humans with shared values. She also inspired me to take a deep dive into my (and my brand's) core values, which was something I marinated on for several weeks and that resulted in some pretty significant a-ha moments for me. Crystal is incredibly kind, funny, thoughtful, professional, brilliant, and an all-around amazing human. I cannot recommend her and her work more highly!!!"
—Leah Weinberg, Weinberg Legal
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"Crystal's thoughtful mentorship and uncanny ability to foster others confidence and creativity completely helped me reshape my business.
The mix of challenging but important coursework and discussions with her over the course of a few weeks helped me break down barriers and reach a new place in my business that I hadn’t been able to achieve in nearly six years on my own. Not only is Crystal incredible at helping brands realize their truest potential as inclusive, holistic enterprises, she’s also just a kickass person! I can’t wait to continue working with her in the years to come to make my business flourish even more."
—Justin McCallum, Justin McCallum Photography
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“I gained the confidence to say ‘no’ to opportunities that don’t align with my values—and that’s a big deal.
I highly recommend working with Crystal and going through her program. It has been so invaluable to me; and I know it can be invaluable to others. I think a lot of people might not think they need a leadership development program, but for those of us that are in leadership positions, it is so important that we can be a leader for everyone. That means having a greater understanding of what inclusion means and how we can create more welcoming and brave spaces for others. And I really enjoyed working to uncover my core values to build and strengthen that foundation for myself and for my business. I feel like I am a more confident and empowered leader, armed with the tools and resources to navigate my business and the challenges and the decisions that I will have to make.”
—Kathryn Stice, founder, In Trusted Company
Frequently Asked Questions
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ALIGNED is different because this is leadership development and brand strategy that flows from your real, wholeheartedly-believed-in values. This inside-out approach makes what you absorb here transferable to any business pivot or career transition — and it’s what makes your leadership style and brand magnetic in their authenticity.
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I’m sorry you’ve had this experience, and I have too. I believe this is a common experience, particularly among leaders in organizations, because most training takes an outside-in approach. They lead with telling you what to do, rather than what we do in ALIGNED: discovering your values and building your own aligned approach to leadership that feels organic and intuitive. That’s the important difference.
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Yes! About 50 percent of ALIGNED clients have been leaders within organizations such as for-profit companies, NGOs, and universities. The leadership element of the program is designed to support you in your role as a leader creating inclusive spaces. The brand part of the experience will apply to your personal brand as a leader.
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Yes! Many ALIGNED clients have been solopreneurs. Not all leadership refers to directly leading a team of people who report to you. Leadership also refers to how you steward your solo company and show up online as a voice to listen to.
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Worrying about this means your heart is in the right place, but it’s also important that you don’t let fear stop you. ALIGNED is the perfect place for you to get the space, time, and support to do the challenging internal work to build inclusivity into your brand and leadership style in an authentic way.
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That’s a great question, and you’re in good company: about 50 percent of ALIGNED clients are part of marginalized communities.
As a Queer, Black woman who has worked with people from many diverse backgrounds, I can tell you that I, myself, have been introduced to things I didn't previously know, and clients I've worked with who are also a part of marginalized communities have learned new things through our work together. And ultimately, this work is about finding and standing firm in your values so you feel able to fully express your identity professionally.
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Yes, you can still join! You don't need to have a website or social media presence before starting. In fact, you’re in a great place right now: once you've completed the program, you'll have all of the messaging you'll need to create an empowered online presence that inspires your ideal community.
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Yes, I have experience working with neurodivergent and highly sensitive people as a leadership and personal brand consultant. This is one of the primary reasons why I create containers that are human-focused and trauma-informed. If you need special accommodations, please reach out. You are not required to self-identify if you prefer not to; however, please share the best ways I can support you during our time together.
Client Reflections
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"I worked with Crystal on brand coaching, and it was far more transformative than I could have imagined.
She creates such a warm space to feel safe getting honest with yourself, which is what you need to make real progress. I'm going to be referring to our work together constantly--and I don't know where I would be without it. I HIGHLY recommend reaching out to Crystal if you know you want to be inclusive in your business or brand... but don't know where exactly to start."
—Krista Walsh, Krista Walsh Copywriter
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"WOW! Her program was introspective and evolutionary
it made me feel like I had the tools to evolve myself, my business, and my values and express them in the way I really want to. I HIGHLY recommend doing her program for every and any business. She answered my questions and created a beautiful, supportive space to learn."
—Paige Ray, Paige Ray Creative
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"Crystal is A PRO!
I worked with Crystal to dive deep into my branding and core values as a company working in the wedding industry. We worked one on one through issues, trouble spots, and growth opportunities. She was supportive, professional, and wise in her approach and practice. Crystal possesses a unique skill to not only get at the heart of the issue by creating a safe space for vulnerability but also challenging you with actionable next steps - not afraid to nudge when it's necessary. I cannot recommend Crystal highly enough and frankly, wish I had her when I started my business six years ago. But I know that I will certainly be a repeat client, however, and recommend her to anyone + everyone."
—Amy Shack Egan, Modern Rebel & Co.
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"The SINGLE BEST THING I did for myself and my business was to work with “brand therapist” Crystal Whiteaker.
With clarity on my motivations for being a florist and teacher, I can better communicate through my work, navigate my path with purpose, and make tough decisions with ease. I wish this for everyone!! I believe this is also how we tap into our own unique creative expression. I highly encourage learning from and working with Crystal–it will immediately elevate your professional and personal impact."
—Susan McLeary, Passion Flower Sue
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I would 100% recommend Crystal's coaching and cannot recommend her more highly!
I worked with Crystal to reexamine and dive deep into my business and brand all through the lens of creating a more welcoming, inclusive brand. I would 100% recommend Crystal's coaching and cannot recommend her more highly! Crystal helped me rediscover parts of my brand that I'd pushed aside and gave me the needed encouragement to share my heart on a deeper level within my brand and life. Before this, I didn't know anyone that I trusted to do this work alongside, so I was thankful when Crystal shared the opportunity. If you're looking to rediscover your brand values, share your heart with your community, and walk a daily journey to a more inclusive brand all within a safe, encouraging space - Crystal is your go-to guide!
—Kara Evans, Kara Evans Photographer
Only from deep personal clarity does an inclusive, values-aligned brand and leadership strategy flourish
If this resonates with you, ALIGNED will feel like home.
I can’t wait to welcome you in.
