A practicing attorney, former public servant and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion professional with experience in local government and higher education, Crystal Rodriguez-Dabney currently serves as Chief Diversity Officer and Senior Vice President at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. As part of the senior leadership team, Rodriguez-Dabney leads Roswell Park’s ongoing efforts to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and access within the cancer center and throughout the communities it serves.Rodriguez-Dabney joined Roswell Park in June 2023 after serving as First Deputy Mayor and Chief of Staff for the City of Buffalo for more than a year, having also previously served in Mayor Byron Brown’s administration from 2007 to 2018, including an appointment as the city’s Chief Diversity Officer.
In between her leadership roles with the City of Buffalo, Rodriguez-Dabney served as Chief Diversity Officer and Chief of Staff at SUNY Buffalo State University from 2018 to 2022.
In her most recent role with the city of Buffalo, Rodriguez-Dabney, a lawyer with advanced certification from Cornell University in Diversity and Inclusion, steered successful efforts to engage and support richly diverse communities and organizations. She reported directly to Mayor Brown, implementing his public policies and coordinating the operations of city departments. She played a central role in the response to the May 14, 2022, racially targeted mass shooting at a grocery store on Buffalo’s East Side.
As the City of Buffalo’s chief diversity officer from 2015 to 2018, Rodriguez-Dabney developed the city’s Opportunity Pledge and spearheaded Mayor Brown’s Opportunity Agenda, which focused on embracing racial equity, diversity, and inclusion and ensuring that opportunities created by the recent economic renaissance in the city could be shared by all. She also led an overhaul of the city’s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MBE/WBE) policies and procedures, and initiated work on the first phase of the Buffalo Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative.
At Buffalo State, Rodriguez-Dabney assisted the college in eliminating barriers based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other differences by creating intentional, more productive guidelines and policies. Through the university’s Equity and Diversity Office, she created a resource center to address the needs of historically underrepresented students; she worked with various stakeholders to restructure initiatives surrounding anti-racist topics and anti-racist general education classes; she helped develop a diversity and inclusion coaching program for faculty; and she established connections with diverse alumni across the country. As Chief of Staff at Buffalo State, her duties included oversight of all operations in the President’s Office; she worked to support and implement the President’s mission across campus; and she helped execute the President’s response to national reckonings of racial inequities and the Black Lives Matter movement.
From 2008 to 2016, Rodriguez-Dabney served as executive director of the City of Buffalo’s Commission on Citizens’ Rights and Community Relations. In this role, she developed and revitalized the department around a mission-focused strategic plan, connecting citizens directly to agencies best suited to address their concerns. She also designed and implemented programs based on social and community climate topics, such as race relations, anti-bullying initiatives, and community-police interactions.
In 2007, Rodriguez-Dabney started her career in city government as the executive assistant to the mayor, maintaining the mayor’s schedule, fielding invitations for community meetings, drafting internal and external communications for the mayor, and managing secretarial staff in the executive offices.
Rodriguez-Dabney has also held positions as a legal fellow and law clerk for the New York State Unified Court System (2007–2008) and as an adjunct faculty member at the University at Buffalo (2006–2011). Rodriguez-Dabney serves on a number of boards such as Explore & More, Read to Succeed, Olmsted Conservancy, UB Law School Alumni Association, WNY Women’s Foundation, and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum Community Advisory Council.
She earned a BA in social sciences from California State University San Marcos (2003) and a JD and LLM from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law (2007).
A veteran of the U.S. Navy, Rodriguez-Dabney has four children and resides in Buffalo with her husband.
