- Company
- Crisis Text Line
- Role
- Founder & CEO
- Est. Net Worth
- $3 Million (Est.)
- Stage
- Emerging
- Industry
- Healthcare
Nancy Lublin
Founder & CEO at Crisis Text Line
About
Nancy Lublin founded Crisis Text Line in 2013, building the first free, 24/7 text-based mental health support service in the United States. She previously founded Dress for Success, a nonprofit providing professional clothing and career support to women entering the workforce, and served as CEO of DoSomething.org. Lublin has spent her career building organizations that use technology and scale to serve people in need.
Current Company
Crisis Text Line — Founder & CEO
Building Nonprofits That Scale Like Startups
Nancy Lublin has founded and led three of the most innovative social impact organizations of the past 25 years. In 1996, at age 25, she used a $5,000 inheritance from her great-grandfather to found Dress for Success, a nonprofit that provides professional clothing, career coaching, and support to women transitioning into the workforce. The organization has since expanded to over 150 cities worldwide.
After Dress for Success, Lublin served as CEO of DoSomething.org, transforming it from a struggling nonprofit into one of the largest organizations for young people and social change in the world. Under her leadership, the platform grew to millions of members and became a model for using mobile technology and gamification to drive civic engagement among teenagers and young adults.
Crisis Text Line: Technology Meets Mental Health
In 2013, while running DoSomething.org, Nancy Lublin noticed that young people were texting the organization about serious personal crises — abuse, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm. That observation led her to found Crisis Text Line, the first free, 24/7 text-based mental health support service in the United States, staffed by trained volunteer counselors.
Crisis Text Line has handled millions of conversations and pioneered the use of natural language processing to identify and prioritize the highest-risk texters. Lublin's ability to see unmet needs, build organizations from scratch, and apply technology to social problems at scale has made her one of the most effective social entrepreneurs of her generation.