Rooted Edge Consulting, LLC is a Boston area based practice, working with clients across the U.S. Our team includes talented, dynamic consultants with decades of experience in nonprofit and mission-based work, including in hiring, management, grassroots organizing, communications, and more.

Leslie Knight

Senior Recruiter

Leslie is a lifelong educator who has spent her career in nonprofits, working on issues including environmental conservation, access to democracy, STEM education, and anti-racism. For two decades she worked in public education. As a school and district leader Leslie helped to hire and onboard dozens of classroom teachers, managed teams, and developed a strengths-based approach to helping educators realize their full professional potential. She has developed expertise in professional training and facilitation, curriculum development, and mentoring, and continues to use her background to facilitate trainings on curriculum-embedded anti-racism practices in schools. Leslie started her career in grassroots organizing and advocacy where she worked on campaigns for clean water, campaign finance reform, and to protect old- growth forests. She lives in Metrowest Boston and enjoys running, gardening, and playing in the White Mountains with her husband and two children.

Lindsay Crowder

Senior Recruiter and Training Specialist

Kelly joined the Rooted Edge Consulting/Sarah Bennett Consulting team in early 2022. She has worked in a variety of non-profit communications, programming, and development roles, including in community education, sustainability, food justice, Appalachian immersion and advocacy, housing justice, and ecological and immigration advocacy with a number of faith-based organizations and other nonprofits. Kelly has managed more than a dozen staff through the years and been a part of multiple recruitment searches with Rooted Edge Consulting and in-house at nonprofits as well. She lives in Northeast Ohio with her children, dog, and three cats, and has a special place in her heart for the mountains and valleys of West Virginia.

Kelly Swan

Recruiter and Communications Support

Lindsay brings over 2 decades of organizing and advocacy experience, centered in environmental and climate justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, movement building, and narrative strategy to Rooted Edge Consulting. She has worked on campaigns and built programs with a range of organizations including Southeast Climate & Energy Network,Young Entertainment Activists, Exposure Labs, Doc Society, New Zero World, Peoples Climate Movement, GLSEN, Save Sutro Forest, Human Rights Campaign, Sierra Club, the PIRGS, and MoveOn. Throughout her career, she has received extended training in DEIJ and anti-oppression approaches and has built expertise in movement strategy, grassroots organizing, coalition building, organizational development, recruitment, team building and training, leadership and management best practices and more. She is based in Detroit with her wife and animals and is inspired by her home base as a space for movement building and social change.