Meet Chrissy Dunlap
In an era where leadership often prioritizes optics over substance, Chrissy Dunlap represents a different kind of authority, one built under pressure, refined through experience, and grounded in presence rather than performance. Based in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Chrissy is a leadership strategist, executive advisor, and founder of Power of ACRA, a framework that helps leaders regulate chaos, build trust, and lead with clarity when it matters most. For more than two decades, she has worked alongside executives, and teams navigating high stakes growth, cultural friction, and uncertainty. Through keynote speaking, leadership workshops, and advisory work, Chrissy challenges leaders to move beyond reactivity and perfectionism and lead with emotional intelligence, and humanity. Guided by faith and shaped by lived experience, she is redefining what effective leadership looks like in rooms where pressure is high and outcomes matter.
Clarity in the Fire, Humanity in the Work
Chrissy Dunlap’s leadership was not shaped in classrooms or corner offices. It was forged in live arenas, under pressure, where decisions had to land fast and credibility was earned in real time. Before she ever coached executives on presence, emotional intelligence, or conflict reframing, she was running around sports venues across the country, managing partnerships and live-event activations for over 100 professional and collegiate teams. In those environments, pressure arrived quickly, emotions ran high, and credibility was tested in real time. Chrissy learned early that people respond to energy before they respond to words.
“The first job of a leader is to regulate the room, not react to it,” she recalls, a lesson formed long before she had language for it.
What began as survival in fast-moving, male-dominated environments slowly evolved into something more intentional. Through lived experience, not theory, Chrissy developed a deep understanding of how fear, ego, and unregulated emotion quietly undermine performance. She saw how leaders often confuse confidence with control, and how teams suffer when clarity is replaced by reactivity. Years later, those lessons would take form as ACRA, her signature leadership framework built on Active Listening, Check Your Self, Reframe the Room, and Authenticity in Action. But ACRA did not begin as a framework. To understand ACRA, you have to understand the woman who built it.
From Cornfields to Boardrooms: The Early Journey
Chrissy Dunlap’s story begins far from corporate boardrooms and executive titles. She was raised in rural Illinois, in a setting where work was expected, resilience was necessary, and effort mattered more than recognition. “I grew up in the cornfields; small town, big heart, and a front-row seat to what real work looks like,” she recalls. Those early years shaped her relationship with responsibility and effort long before leadership became a formal pursuit. Nothing about her path followed a straight line. Entering the male-dominated world of professional sports, Chrissy found herself repeatedly in environments where expectations were high and certainty was limited. Alongside the demands of her career, she navigated personal challenges including fertility challenges, body image struggles, and periods of personal growth that demanded honesty and resilience.
Rather than seeking stability, she gravitated toward roles that demanded initiative, problem-solving, and the willingness to step into uncertainty. Looking back, she sees a clear pattern: “Every career move I made had one thing in common: I was either building something that didn’t exist or fixing something that was broken. There was never a playbook waiting for me… I was usually the one writing it.”
It was in those undefined spaces that Chrissy began to understand leadership as a practice rather than a performance. Without a script to follow, she learned to show up fully, ask thoughtful questions, and listen carefully before acting. Over time, that approach became a defining part of how she leads, what she later came to describe as choosing presence over perfection.
The Pattern Beneath the Pressure
As Chrissy moved from sports into nonprofit and corporate leadership, the settings changed, but the human dynamics did not. Across industries, she encountered the same challenges in different forms. Miscommunication disguised as conflict. Leaders performing confidence instead of embodying clarity. Teams hungry for honesty but hesitant to engage with tension. Cultures driven more by reactivity than intention. What stood out to her was not a lack of skill or intelligence. It was fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of losing control.
After attending college in Chicago at Loyola, Chrissy began her career at InStadium, a sports marketing agency where she managed national partnerships for live sports programming distributed across networks spanning the MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, and dozens of regional and minor league teams. She was often the youngest person in the room, and frequently the only woman. Rather than shrinking, she studied. She listened. She learned how to read a room of powerful men before they decided whether she belonged. Over several years, she rose from operations support to independently leading sales in a new market learning firsthand how to strategically build community rather than transaction driven networks. Curiosity and emotional intelligence became her differentiators. Trust became her currency.
“Sports taught me grit and the high of competition. Nonprofit work grounded me in purpose. Corporate life taught structure… and what happens when you build the wrong kind,” Chrissy reflects. “And entrepreneurship? That one taught me surrender. It’s the only arena where you can’t fake clarity.”
Her career later expanded into rebranding and rebuilding iconic properties such as the Mesquite Championship Rodeo and the Dallas Stars. At Susan G. Komen, she led the integration of one of the organization’s largest national fundraising programs, The 3-Day, breaking through internal cultural barriers that had existed for more than a decade. Across every environment, one truth remained constant. People and performance are inseparable.
A Turning Point: The Season That Changed Everything
Chrissy’s most defining leadership chapter came during her tenure at BirdieBox where she served as Vice President of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, and later Chief Brand Officer. The company experienced rapid growth, high visibility partnerships, and national expansion. It was also an environment where pressure mounted quickly and systems were tested.
“It was the most impactful, rewarding, confidence-building, and yet heartbreakingly humbling season of my professional life,” she reflects. “For six years, it was magic: big clients, explosive growth, a team that felt like family. And then, in year seven, everything unraveled.” Rather than distancing herself from the turbulence, Chrissy leaned in. Guided by the principles she had lived long before she named them, she chose transparency over performance and consistency over control. “I told the truth when I didn’t have answers,” she recalls. “Even in the chaos, I stayed consistent in character. That consistency is part of why people still show up for me today.”
At the same time, she felt a growing spiritual nudge. For more than a year, she sensed God preparing her for a transition she could not yet fully see. Four months before her planned exit, circumstances shifted suddenly and decisively. In hindsight, she sees it clearly.
“It was not a setback. It was a setup. A necessary unraveling that freed me to step fully into the work God had already prepared for me.”
And that conviction became The Power of ACRA.
The Birth of the ACRA Framework
What emerged from that season was not a business idea, but a distillation of everything Chrissy had lived. Power of ACRA became the formal articulation of a leadership philosophy shaped under pressure and refined through experience. Each pillar of ACRA reflects her personal evolution. It stands for Active Listening, Check Your Self, Reframe the Room, and Authenticity in Action. It is not a corporate curriculum. It is a behavioral blueprint designed to help leaders regulate fear, shift narratives, and lead with clarity and compassion.
“ACRA didn’t come from a textbook,” she emphasizes. “It came from years of walking into unknowns, building things from scratch, fixing what was broken, leading through mess. Chaos reveals character.”
Through ACRA, Chrissy works with leaders across industries including sports, insurance, retail, hospitality, entertainment, and high growth businesses. The common denominator is not the field. It is the human condition. Her work blends executive advisory, leadership diagnostics, conflict resolution, and communication coaching, delivered without jargon or performative leadership language. As she often says, “If people cannot feel you, they will not follow you.” Explore more here.
Public Speaking and Influence: Energy Meets Strategy
As a keynote speaker, Chrissy brings her philosophy to stages across the country, engaging audiences ranging from Fortune 500 executives to nonprofit leaders and emerging professionals. Her speaking style blends storytelling, humor, psychology, and practical application, creating moments that feel less like presentations and more like recalibration. She trains executive teams to listen for meaning rather than response, teaching tools that foster trust, collaboration, and emotional regulation. Learn more about Chrissy’s keynote topics, and speaking engagements here.
“Listening for meaning requires surrendering control,” she notes. “When leaders let go of control, conversations stop being negotiations and start becoming collaborations.”
A passionate advocate for women in leadership, Chrissy challenges the belief that credibility must be earned through constant proving. She encourages authenticity over competition and embodied leadership over performance.
“Stop auditioning for rooms you have already earned a seat in,” she often tells women leaders. “Authenticity is not weakness. It is alignment.”
The Personal Story That Makes the Professional One Matter
Chrissy Dunlap’s capacity for emotional intelligence did not come from workshops or credentials. It came from life. Over the years, she has walked through seasons that demanded resilience rather than performance. Experiences marked by loss, emotional complexity, grief that reshapes you from the inside out, spiritual warfare, and profound periods of betrayal and rebuilding. Each chapter required growth. Each one took her deeper into the work she now teaches. She often says that leadership is built in private long before it ever shows up in public. That belief is not theoretical for her. It is lived.
It is why her keynotes feel less like presentations and more like moments of recognition. Why her clients feel seen rather than assessed. Why leaders often say she names the very thing they have been avoiding, with a clarity that lands without cruelty. Chrissy does not position herself as someone who has arrived. She leads from within the journey itself. In doing so, she gives others permission to show up honestly, regulate their presence, and grow without pretending to have it all together.
Where She Is Now and Why Her Voice Matters
Faith has remained a guiding force throughout Chrissy Dunlap’s journey, shaping not only her decisions but the way she defines leadership itself. She often describes her work today as obedience driven rather than strategy led. My vision is to be a professional seed planter,” she reflects. “When I trade my hustle for His guidance, peace, purpose, and impact follow.” Today, Chrissy leads a thriving advisory and leadership consultancy, designs high impact workshops, conducts culture diagnostics, and speaks on stages across the country. Yet her work resonates not because it is inspirational, but because it is deeply practical.
Chrissy does not aim to motivate leaders for a moment. She aims to equip them for the reality they face every day. Her work meets organizations operating in noise, fear, or performance mode and helps restore what has been missing. Clarity. Trust. Humanity. In a corporate landscape saturated with leadership jargon and performative confidence, Chrissy offers something increasingly rare: truth delivered with tact, humor grounded in heart, and clarity without cruelty.
She teaches leaders how to walk into any room, from high-stakes executive meetings to packed stadiums, and show up fully and honestly. When leaders regulate their presence and lead with intention, the room changes. Culture shifts. The work becomes lighter, and people stop bracing and start building together again.
Empowering Lessons from the Path of Chrissy Dunlap
- Lead with Presence: “Humility and curiosity have always been the real differentiators.”
- Trust Enables Execution: “Trust is the strategy; execution is the outcome.”
- Empathy Anchors Culture: “Empathy isn’t being nice. It’s being aware.”
- Community Over Network: “Your community should be built on authenticity, not transaction.”
Connect with Chrissy Dunlap
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissydunlap/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerofacra/?hl=en
Website: https://www.chrissydunlap.com/
Editorial Note: A Call to Lead with Presence
Chrissy Dunlap’s story exemplifies what it means to lead with courage, clarity, and conviction. Her work with Power of ACRA challenges the traditional models of leadership by infusing empathy, trust, and faith into strategy and execution.
Her journey reminds us that leadership isn’t about being the loudest in the room, it’s about being the most present. By redefining how we listen, connect, and lead, Chrissy Dunlap is helping leaders everywhere turn uncertainty into alignment and performance into purpose.
