Cynthia Turner, PhD
The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business
Cynthia W. Turner currently serves as the Assistant Dean and Chief Diversity Officer at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. She has served on the faculty in Fisher’s Department of Accounting & MIS since 2013, after spending 17 years at the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was lecturer and associate director of the accountancy department’s undergraduate program. Turner has a MA and PhD in accounting from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and a BS in accounting from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, NC. She was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in Accounting from The Ohio State University in 1996.
Aa faculty member in the Accounting & MIS Department, Turner teaches courses in both the undergraduate and MAcc programs. Further, she teaches in the executive education program at Fisher College. As a researcher, Turner’s scholarly work has been featured in the top-tiered journals of accounting. In 2016, she created Project THRIVE, a diversity initiative designed to increase the underrepresented minority talent within the undergraduate program in the accounting and MIS department. In 2018, she was honored for her success in doubling the diversity within the undergraduate program in two short years and was awarded the Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award by the university.
Prior to beginning her academic career, Turner was a practicing accountant at EY. She is a certified public accountant and member of the American Accounting Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the National Association of Black Accountants.
