Krystal Marie Ball is a 29-year-old former Congressional candidate and current MSNBC contributor; in addition to being a Certified Public Accountant, software engineer, small business owner and mother. Krystal was recently named by Forbes Magazine as number 21 on the magazine’s “Most Powerful Women in the Mid Term Elections” list.
Krystal was the Democratic Nominee for US Congress for the 1st District of Virginia in 2010. Although she did not win, her electoral performance was exceptional given the overall climate for Democrats in 2010. Her campaign displayed an unusually strong fundraising prowess and excelled in the use of social media in politics. The campaign raised nearly $1M as a first time candidate from more than 6,000 donors in all 50 states.
The campaign also weathered a high-profile controversy when party photos from Ball’s early twenties were released by a Republican blog. The photos made Krystal into an overnight internet superstar and her forceful response made her into an icon for many young feminists. Krystal quickly became the 3rd most googled term in the world and her graceful and powerful response to the photo controversy was covered internationally, from the New York Times to the Boston Globe, London Daily Mail, The Times of India and on NPR, MSNBC, Fox, ABC and CNN. Her editorial on the photo leak in The Huffington Post, The Next Glass Ceiling, has become something of a manifesto for a new generation of feminists.
Krystal was born in rural King George County, Virginia, where she had her own pet goats and attended local public schools. She was raised around guns, farms and target practice and is a third generation, lifetime member of the NRA. Krystal was an undefeated state champion swimmer, NCAA Div I scholarship athlete and has a degree in economics from the University of Virginia. She is a CPA and worked with the US Federal Courts to redesign their civil and criminal accounting systems across 89 Federal district courts.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she traveled to Louisiana to assist the courts and their personnel in the effort to rebuild. For the previous four years, Krystal has owned her own educational software design company, building learning software used in public and private schools around the world. Krystal is married to Jonathan and has a 2 year old daughter, Ella Marie.
