Crawford is originally from Boonville, Indiana.[1] Her mother, the daughter of a local banker, had degrees in teaching and laboratory technology; her grandmother was a schoolteacher. Her father was a coal miner, farmer, and dry cleaning shop owner.[2] She moved to Santa Monica, California with her family as a teenager, and majored in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles,[1] supporting her studies through part-time work.[2]
After graduating, she immediately applied to work for the RAND Corporation, but was not hired. Instead, she obtained a position as a computer programmer at North American Aviation, through a connection with an executive there for whom she had worked as a babysitter.[2] She finally joined the RAND Corporation in 1964, at first working there as a computer programmer in the aeronautics/astronautics department's armament group.[1] She has been a vice president of the corporation,[3] and director of its Project Air Force from 1997 to 2006.[1] On stepping down from this directorship, she became a senior fellow, distinguished chair in air and space policy, and professor in the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School.[4]