After a decade of military service, he studied public administration at Harvard University's John F. Īfter high school, Crenshaw returned to the United States and attended Tufts University, graduating in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and a minor in physics.
In 2002, he graduated from Colegio Nueva Granada in Bogotá, Colombia. His father, Jim Crenshaw, is a petroleum engineer who worked abroad, and Crenshaw spent time growing up in Ecuador and Colombia, developing proficiency in Spanish. His mother died of cancer when he was ten years old. Born to American parents in Aberdeen, United Kingdom, Crenshaw grew up in Katy, Texas.
