Cynthia Mompoint, founder and CEO of the Danbala Group, has over 25 years experience leading organizational change and building effective, equitable and impactful systems across various industries dealing with racial inequities. Graduating with a degree in Political Science from Georgetown University, where she conducted research at both Georgetown Medical Center and Georgetown's Center for Social Justice, Cynthia was part of the inaugural team of leaders at the university’s social justice institute. She volunteered with the DC Reads program serving Washington DC’s elementary and middle school students. Recognizing the major gap in access to quality education facing racial minority students, Cynthia entered the educator workforce through an AmeriCorps program, Teach for America, where she worked with the school system for 9 years, well after her 2 year commitment to effectuate change in Atlanta’s City Schools. She completed her Master's in Educational Leadership, shifting focus from evaluating students and curricula to evaluating systems and training educators and school leaders in organizational change.
Cynthia took her experience in the field to MA’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education where she witnessed and experienced racial injustice firsthand. Brought on under the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top Initiative to evaluate policy and create programs that address the achievement gap and the inequities in the education system particularly within the educator workforce, Cynthia spearheaded numerous initiatives. During that time, she created and launched the MA’s aMAzing Educator campaign to recruit and retain diverse talent, particularly black and latino/a educators. She also founded and lead the Massachusetts Advocates for Diversity in Education (MADE), a task force of a variety of key political, social, and educational stakeholders in MA who were committed to developing actionable recommendations that would contribute to the success of our schools in eliminating the racial achievement gap. Under her leadership, that task force issued the MADE Report which served as the foundation for numerous other agency programming including the cultural proficiency metrics in the educator evaluation system and the, now, Teach Massachusetts campaign.
Outside of her time in education advocacy and policy work, the wife and mother of four works with local minority communities assisting immigrant populations and younger generations in addressing the wealth gap through home ownership and real estate investment. Working alongside the Haitian Community Center, a family founded non-profit, Cynthia created and facilitated first time home buyer training workshops empowering members of the Haitian community in the Greater Boston Area.
Her work crosses numerous industries yet addresses the pervasive effects of white supremacy including racism, disparity in treatment, and access inequities.