Cindy Lopez is an experienced higher education leader, educator, facilitator who is passionate about serving students, especially those underserved. She leads executive searches and supports college board education in a variety of areas, including using student success data and understanding higher education trends and reforms. 

Until recently, she was the Executive Director of Network Engagement at Achieving the Dream (ATD), where she oversaw support for Network colleges seeking to improve the student experience and student outcomes. Her responsibilities included overseeing multiple complex initiatives supporting groups of colleges through their ATD experience, including Tribal Colleges and Universities and rural colleges. She guided ATD coaching for these projects and codesigned, led and facilitated learning events and experiences that supported college data capacity building and student success reform work in holistic student supports, workforce preparation and other areas. She also presented this work at higher education conferences.

Prior to working at ATD, Ms. Lopez worked for ACCT where she facilitated state and regional board institutes to facilitate understanding of key student success metrics and evidence-based higher education reforms. She has also instructed undergraduate and graduate students and served as a university program administrator. 

Ms. Lopez is from Oklahoma. She went to Cottey College and Mount Vernon College for her undergraduate work and Johns Hopkins University for her master’s degree. She is English/Spanish fluent.