Cindy Ward, EdD, is the Founder and Managing Director of ONWARD Education Consulting, where she partners with Colorado schools and districts on multi-year systems redesign to strengthen improvement efforts. She earned her doctorate in Education System Improvement Science from Clemson University, with a research focus on rural district improvement and the use of boundary infrastructure as an organizing mechanism in rural settings.
Cindy’s career spans the classroom, school, district, and state levels, with a consistent focus on schools and districts serving students from poverty and marginalized communities. She began her career as a special education teacher on the Navajo Nation in Arizona before moving through roles as teacher, instructional coach, assistant principal, principal, and curriculum specialist in Denver Area Schools. As a member of the Colorado Department of Education’s School and District Transformation Team, she led the design of Colorado’s School and District Conditions for Dramatic Improvement, implementing evidence-based frameworks and identifying the conditions that made school and district transformation possible.
Cindy’s expertise sits at the intersection of research, practice, and system design. Her approach is grounded in the conviction that durable improvement comes when the people closest to students have the evidence, tools, and organizational conditions to transform the systems they work within.