Dr. Cynthia Cole

Dr. Cynthia Cole serves as Chief Executive Officer and President of Cole, Alex, & Miles, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in the management consulting, business process design and development, education, criminal justice and community engagement, and information technology sectors.

From 2015 through 2017, Dr. Cole served as Senior Policy Advisor in The Office of the Under Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education. As Senior Policy Advisor, Dr. Cole provided strategic and contextual advice and counsel to the Under Secretary regarding education policy matters, wrote agency reports, and designed and facilitated strategic and impactful convenings to affect change, strengthen systems, and assess policy on a national scale.

Prior to joining the US Department of Education, from 2007 until 2015, Dr. Cole served as a university administrator and professor in the Purdue University system where she hired and supervised faculty and staff, chaired and served on promotion and tenure committees, prepared departmental programs for national accreditation, developed and maintained programs, administered the departmental budget to foster efficiency and improve curriculum delivery while adhering to fiscal constraints, as well as served on the Chancellor’s Budget Advisory Committee.

Dr. Cole taught elementary and secondary school prior to becoming a university professor and administrator. She is the author and editor of three books, From the Classroom to the Corner: Female Dropouts’ Reflections on Their School Years, Tedious Journeys and co-editor of Uprooting Urban America: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Race, Class & Gentrification, as well as articles on the socio-cultural context of education.

Prior to her educational career, from 1996 through 1998, Dr. Cole was an analyst trained for executive leadership in commercial banking in the Rotational Management Program at American National Bank which eventually merged into what is now J.P. Morgan Chase Bank.

Dr. Cole received her B.A. in Psychology from The University of Chicago in 1996. She received her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from The University of Illinois at Chicago in 1999, and her Ph.D. in Curriculum Design from The University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004 where she received The University Fellowship for her dissertation and doctoral award for Most Promising Doctoral Candidate.