Meet Makeda Crane 

 About Makeda Crane

• Makeda S. Crane, Esq. is an attorney mediator, and workplace trainer who helps people name harm, restore dignity, and build more truthful, sustainable relationships at work and beyond.
• Born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, she witnessed early how inequality shows up in real life, even as block parties, culture, and everyday brilliance filled the neighborhood, through economic disparity, violence, and the ways systems try to shrink what people imagine is possible.
  
  
  
• That clarity shaped her instinct to speak truth to power. In high school, she initiated a student petition challenging a school ban on a political T-shirt she believed violated a student’s First Amendment rights; the administration lifted the ban after the petition succeeded.
  
  
• Crane earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she continued organizing, including coordinating a multi-organization rally against police brutality in honor of Amadou Diallo. After college, she served as a youth advocate in East Baltimore, then joined the Baltimore Sun editorial department, publishing opinion pieces on race, violence, and U.S. foreign policy.
  
  
• In 2009, she traveled to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an investigative journalist in partnership with Friends of the Congo, later speaking across the U.S. and Canada to advocate for political solutions to the region’s resource-driven conflict.
  
  
  
• In 2013, Crane co-founded a Washington, D.C. based advocacy organization that helped advance the passage of the Decriminalization Amendment Act of 2014. She earned her J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, serving as President of both the National Lawyers Guild and the Black Law Students Association.
• Crane founded Feather & Scale Strategies, supporting individuals and organizations in navigating conflict and cultural repair, bridging measurable outcomes with human-centered values.