Dr. Cindy Pace is a leading authority on the intersections of diversity, leadership, and power. She is known for her expertise in advancing women and Women of Color into top leadership roles. Cindy is the Vice President, Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, at MetLife. She has more than 20 years of professional including holding global corporate management and leadership roles financial services, healthcare, and biopharmaceutical corporations. At Pfizer and MetLife, she was responsible for the strategic design and delivery of inaugural global gender diversity initiatives and inclusive talent programs. Both of these initiatives successfully increased diverse talent in leadership roles.
Beyond her success in large corporations, Cindy is widely respected as a researcher and scholar. She is an inaugural faculty member of Columbia’s Master of Science program in Human Capital Management and serves as an adjunct lecturer on inclusive leadership at Columbia Global Center in Rio de Janeiro. Cindy has researched and written about how Women of Color advance and navigate leadership in Harvard Business Review (HBR) and Women’s Leadership Journeys: Stories, Research, and Novel Perspectives (Routledge). A chapter adapted from her HBR article will be published in the book You, the Leader (HBR Women at Work Series) (Harvard Business Review Press, available in February 2022). Her business perspectives and research insights have been recognized in the Financial Times, Fortune, HBR Ascend, Forbes, and TED + Brightline.
While her groundbreaking work on developing Women of Color in management at Pfizer was recognized as a best practice in Working Mother’s list of 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers. Her current work on advancing diversity, gender equity, and women in leadership at MetLife has been recognized by UN Women and UN Global Compact; Forbes; the Women’s Forum of New York; McKinsey; and the National Association for Female Executives, which named MetLife a top company for executive women. MetLife was also named to the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index five years in a row and after a decade’s absence recently landed on the Best Companies for Multicultural Women list.
Cindy has been recognized as one of the Elite 100 Black Women Executives Changing the Face of Corporate America by Diversity Woman Media, was profiled as a Woman Worth Watching by Diversity Journal and received the Red Shoe Leader Award in 2020.
Along with being a global thought leader, Cindy has earned the reputation of being a captivating speaker, engaging moderator and masterful facilitator. She has delivered workshops and spoken at numerous conferences and events for dozens of corporations, organizations, and universities, including Partners HealthCare, Ernst & Young, Compass Group, Microsoft, Ellevate, the UN Global Compact Uniting Business Forum, the NeuroLeadership Summit, the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion Forum, the Global Summit of Women, the International Leadership Association, the Seneca Women Innovation Forum, BPW International, the Multicultural Women’s National Conference, the Women of Color in Pharma Summit, the Womensphere Global Summit, the Women in Negotiation Summit, the Women in Global Leadership Development Forum, Japan Society, Asia Society, the Global Advancement of Women Summit, the Colloquium on Global Diversity, The Conference Board’s Women’s Leadership Conference, Proud to Be Latina, The Red Shoe Conference, Universidad Europea de Valencia’s MBA program, Columbia Business School’s Women in Leadership Program, the Women Leadership Network Program at Columbia University Global Centers-Rio de Janeiro, the Harvard Business School Gender & Work Symposium, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, MIT Solve, NYU Stern Women in Business, NYU Steinhardt, and the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association.
A believer in education serves as a strong foundation Cindy earned a bachelor of science degree in biology at Morris Brown College, a historically black college and university, masters degree in business education from NYU and a doctorate in organizational leadership and learning from Columbia University. She is a board member of the International Leadership Association and an advisory board member of the UN Women Global Coalition, for Technology and Innovation. She is a passionate advocate of personal leadership development, racial and gender equity, women’s economic and financial empowerment, forest preservation and restoration.