Cynthia Cooper is an internationally recognized speaker, consultant, and best-selling author. In her book Extraordinary Circumstances, she shares her experiences and the lessons she learned during the WorldCom scandal. Cynthia donated all profits from the book to support ethics education for college and high school students. Cynthia speaks globally on topics including ethical leadership, corporate integrity, and how to avoid the pitfalls of organizational failure.

In 2020, Cynthia was included in TIME‘s list of the 100 Women of the Year, highlighting the most influential women of the past century. She was also named one of TIME magazine’s Persons of the Year for her role in uncovering the fraud at WorldCom—one of the largest corporate frauds in history. Cynthia is the first woman inducted into the AICPA Business Hall of Fame. Named one of the 25 Most Influential Working Mothers by Working Mother magazine, she also received the Maria & Sydney E. Rolfe Award for public education in business and finance. In 2022, she received the Internal Audit Beacon Award for thought leadership. She is also an inaugural inductee into the Institute of Internal Auditors’ American Hall of Distinguished Audit Practitioners, and the first woman to receive the American Accounting Association’s Accounting Exemplar Award.

Cynthia has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CFO Magazine, and BusinessWeek. She has shared panels with Anderson Cooper, Donna Brazile, and Grover Norquist, and has appeared on programs on NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox Business, C-SPAN, and CNBC.

Cynthia served on the board of the NASBA Center for the Public Trust, a nonprofit promoting ethical leadership. She is a Certified Fraud Examiner and served as Chairman of the Board of Regents for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the world’s largest anti-fraud organization with nearly 80,000 members. She also served on the Standing Advisory Group of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a nonprofit created by Congress to protect investors through oversight of public company audits. She currently serves on Mississippi State’s College of Business Executive Advisory Board and previously advised the University of Alabama, LSU, and Lehigh University.

She has delivered keynote presentations and training around the world to government agencies including the FBI, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Labor, and the Ontario Securities Commission; leading universities such as Harvard, Cornell, and Western University’s Ivey Business School; intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations; public companies including Dell, France Telecom, Raytheon, Walmart, and Vanguard; and professional associations including the National Association of Corporate Directors, Network of Executive Women, Ethics and Compliance Officers Association, and the Washington D.C. Trial Lawyers Association.

Cynthia began her career in public accounting and previously worked in Atlanta for Deloitte & Touche and Price Waterhouse. Following the WorldCom scandal, she served as Chief Audit Executive at MCI, where she and her team helped guide the company through its emergence from bankruptcy. Cynthia holds a Master of Professional Accountancy from the University of Alabama and a Bachelor of Accountancy from Mississippi State University.