Cynthia is a researcher, writer, and lecturer affiliated with the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. She is also the Systems Storytelling Initiative Lead at the Collective Change Lab. Her research focuses on how organizations and communities work to shape social systems in collective ways.Cynthia’s work in social change began when, as a recovering management consultant, she joined the LGT Impact Fellowship which brought her to South Africa for more than a decade. She has served in several organizations, including Generation Ubuntu, an afterschool program educating children in Cape Town; mothers2mothers, an African social enterprise employingwomen to guide other women to good health; and the Starfish Greathearts Foundation, a nonprofit supporting children and families in South Africa.

Cynthia's passion is finding "stories from the edge" that reveal the power of people incollectives. She recently co-authored The Systems Work of Social Change published by Oxford University Press in September 2021. Cynthia holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MBA from INSEAD.