Cynthia Brinkley is an accomplished public company director, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Director of Women Corporate Directors (WCD), and former Fortune 50 C-suite executive with extensive experience in enterprise transformation, leadership and talent development, organizational culture, growth, and mergers and acquisitions integration.

Brinkley served in senior executive leadership roles at several Fortune 50 companies over a distinguished career spanning more than three decades. At Centene Corporation, she held several executive positions, including President and Chief Operating Officer and Chief Administrative and Markets Officer. In those roles, she had responsibility for the company’s markets business, including P&L; accountability, as well as international operations, government relations, enterprise transformation initiatives, and business integration activities associated with the company’s rapid growth.

Prior to Centene, Brinkley served as Chief Human Resources Officer for General Motors, where she helped lead the company’s post-bankruptcy transformation, talent strategy, leadership development, and organizational redesign efforts.

Before joining General Motors, Brinkley spent 25 years with Southwestern Bell, SBC, and AT&T, where she held a number of senior leadership positions and gained extensive experience leading organizational transformation, merger integration, and cultural change during the historic consolidation of the telecommunications industry. Her responsibilities spanned operations, market leadership, public policy, talent development, and merger integration. She served as Senior Vice President of Talent Development and Chief Diversity Officer, President of AT&T; Missouri and Arkansas, and Vice President of the Los Angeles Region. She led the creation of AT&T; University, and the company was widely recognized for excellence in talent development, leadership development, and workforce training. As AT&T;’s first Chief Diversity Officer, she helped establish the company as a recognized leader in diversity and inclusion.

Brinkley currently serves on the boards of Ameren, Energizer Holdings, and The 1939 Group. She chairs the Human Resources Committee at Ameren and the Human Capital Committees at Energizer Holdings and The 1939 Group. She also serves on the Nominating and Governance Committees of all three boards. Her prior corporate board service includes UMB Bank and Ribera Salud.

Her nonprofit and civic leadership includes service as Chair of the Board of Nine PBS, Chair of the Saint Louis Zoological Commission, Chair of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Deputy Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Co-Chair of the University of Missouri’s billion-dollar fundraising campaign. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, serves on the board of The Opportunity Trust, and chairs the Governance and Nominating Committee of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

Her areas of expertise include enterprise transformation, leadership and talent development, human capital strategy, organizational culture, business integration, board leadership, and building high-performing organizations. Throughout her career, Brinkley has been recognized for developing exceptional leaders, building high-performing organizations, and helping organizations navigate periods of significant transformation and growth.