Cindy Lawson

With more than 30 years of professional experience at various-sized higher education institutions and with a Fortune 500 company, Cindy’s breadth of public relations experience includes crisis communications, issues management, media relations, web communications, integrated marketing and advertising, photography and videography, publications, community relations, visitors centers and speakers bureaus. Cindy has provided issues management and crisis communications consultation to many universities throughout the United States, Canada, and the world. She also has provided 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. As an Observer/Controller for the National Emergency Response and Recovery Training Center in Texas in the past. She provided consultation to numerous cities, counties and municipalities regarding their crisis communications and emergency preparedness. Cindy is a regular 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.

Recently retired, Cindy served in several senior-leadership positions in public relations, communications and marketing at DePaul University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the University of North Carolina system and 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.