Cynthia Connolly is the Director of Programming at the City Club of Cleveland. She has more than a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, most recently with Policy Matters Ohio and Ohio City Incorporated. A citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians located in Northern Michigan, she serves on the Executive Board for the Lake Erie Native American Council and teaches the Native American Studies course at Kent State University.
Cynthia Connolly is the Director of Programming at the City Club of Cleveland. She has more than a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, most recently with Policy Matters Ohio, where she worked since 2015. Prior to that, she worked at Ohio City Incorporated and as a Graduate Researcher in nonprofit program evaluation at the Center for Nonprofit Policy & Practice at Cleveland State University, where she earned a Master of Public Administration degree. She received a BA in American Culture with a focus in Native American Studies from the University of Michigan. A citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians located in Northern Michigan, she began her civic work at an early age, serving as a tribal representative at the National Congress of American Indians located in Washington DC, which advocates for government policies to help Indigenous people. Today, she serves on the Executive Board for the Lake Erie Native American Council and teaches the Native American Studies course at Kent State University. She serves on the boards of University Settlement in Cleveland’s Broadway-Slavic Village neighborhood and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, DC. In 2021, Cynthia was named a Native American Top 40 Under 40 by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise and Development; as well as a 2021 Crain's Cleveland Business 40 Under Forty awardee.
