Jenni Crumpton

Jenni Crumpton is a New York City-based actor in theater, film and television. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Jenni wrote stories in her diary to make sense of life in a city harboring a dark and ugly history. While studying and performing with Birmingham Summerfest Theater, she learned at a young age that silencing stories destroys us, while illuminating the truth heals us. Shortly after 9/11, Jenni packed up a U-Haul with her cat Baxter and moved to Manhattan. After watching the towers fall on TV from her living room in Birmingham, while many understandably left the city, she started making plans to move there. She knew that whatever happened next as the city rose up off its knees, she wanted to be reborn with it. She continued her love of story telling through an advertising career, a social justice career, writing a one-act play about "coming out" produced off-off Broadway, getting published with 4 non-fiction books, and appearing as a live, on-air media commentator on headlines and popular culture for national media like NPR, CNN HLN, MSNBC, and FOX. She earned a Master of Divinity with a political science focus at Columbia University, exploring how diverse cultures over millennia have explained our common experiences of grief, fear, loss, hope and love. In 2015, she wrote Femmevangelical, revealing long-silenced stories of how ancient religious narratives still enmeshed in American culture and politics oppress women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, immigrants and people living in poverty and the industrial prison system, ultimately denying us all our humanity and divine purpose. She has contributed stories on these issues to Variety, TIME, The Hill, Huffington Post, and more. Jenni even trained Melinda Gates' Pivotal Ventures staff on story telling to highlight their global justice work. Later, she opened Osha Ruah : Shining Spirit, a yoga, meditation, reiki and trauma healing practice that helps actors and other humans reclaim their voice, live fully in their body, and be their most authentic self.