Cynthia Turner, PhD

Cynthia W. Turner joined the Department of Accounting and MIS in the autumn of 2013 as a senior lecturer of accounting. Cynthia comes to Fisher having served on the faculty of the Department of Accountancy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for more than 17 years where she was lecturer and associate director of the department’s undergraduate accountancy program. Cynthia has a MA and PhD in accounting from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and a BS in accounting from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, NC. 

Cynthia currently serves on the leadership team at Fisher College as the Assistant Dean and Chief Diversity Officer and has become a widely sought-after facilitator and guest speaker on the topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2016, Cynthia created Project THRIVE, a diversity initiative designed to increase the underrepresented minority talent within the undergraduate program in the accounting and MIS department. In 2018, she was honored for her success in doubling the diversity within the undergraduate program in two short years and was awarded the Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award by the university.   

As a faculty member in the Accounting & MIS Department, Cynthia is an award-winning educator who teaches courses in cost and managerial accounting, and accounting and information systems in the undergraduate and MAcc programs. Further, she teaches in the executive education program at Fisher College. As a researcher, Cynthia's scholarly work has been in the Journal of Accounting Research and the International Journal of Accounting. 

Prior to beginning her academic career, Cynthia was a practicing accountant at EY. She is a certified public accountant and member of the American Accounting Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the National Association of Black Accountants. Further, Cynthia currently sits on the advisory board for the Women Business Collaborative.