In addition to her current job responsibilities as Vice President for Public Relations and Communications at DePaul University, Cindy provides crisis communications consultation to many universities throughout the United States, Canada, and the world.  She also provides timely webinars on a variety of crisis communications and marketing topics through Academic Impressions and HigherEd Hero, and she has been a lead instructor at past Crisis Communications Institutes hosted by Academic Impressions.  In addition, as an Observer/Controller for the National Emergency Response and Recovery Training Center in Texas, she has provided consultation to cities, counties, and municipalities regarding their crisis communications preparedness.  Cindy is a guest speaker at Harvard’s Crisis Leadership in Higher Education, one of that university’s Institutes for Higher Education programs specifically designed for Presidents, Chancellors and other senior leaders. 

Prior to her current position, Cindy served in several senior-leadership positions as Assistant to the Chancellor for Marketing and Communications at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, as Vice President for Communications and Strategy Development for the University of North Carolina system and as Executive Director for University Relations at Texas A&M University.  Prior to that, she provided departmental leadership for marketing and communications programs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the Culver Military Academy and Eastern Michigan University. Before moving to the higher education arena, Cindy worked for more than 14 years in public relations and marketing at Detroit Edison, gaining valuable experience with crisis communications in the nuclear industry arena.

During the 1999 bonfire tragedy at Texas A&M University, during which 12 students died and 27 others were injured, Cindy’s handling of all crisis communications during that tragedy became the benchmark for crisis communication in higher education.  CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC reporters praised her for handling the crisis “as well or better than the Tylenol crisis.”

Cindy has authored the crisis communications chapter for “Campus Crisis Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Planning, Prevention, Response and Recovery” published by Jossey-Bass, and she has authored “Effective Crisis Communications,” a set of instructional materials for the National Response and Recovery Training Center. In addition to the many news and magazine articles written about her handling of the bonfire crisis, several authors have written about her crisis communications leadership, including Kathleen Fearn-Banks’ book “Crisis Communications, A Casebook Approach,” PRSA’s “Strategies and Tactics” and “Weathering the Storm” by Christopher Simpson. Cindy is also a frequent commentator on current crisis communications issues covered by Academic Impressions’ Higher Ed Impact.