Cynthia Renaud | 40 Outstanding Global Women 2025

Cynthia Renaud has risen to the very top of her profession through grit, determination, hard work. She has embraced the opportunities that arose and juggled police work in the 44th most populous city in America with single motherhood. Yet she never had a five-year plan or charted out a rigid career path.

“Sheer blind luck,” she says with a smile. Yet meeting her, it becomes clear that she had the ability to seize opportunities and step through the right doors, even when she doubted herself. Now she is a futurist in the field of safety and security, with huge experience in international work, United States public sector experience, multiple global projects, and leadership roles in international corporate security.

“You should always open doors of opportunity,” an early mentor once told her. “It’s up to you whether or not you choose to walk through them.”

That, she says, has been the defining approach of her career. Not meticulous planning, but making the most of what you are given, and knowing when to hold back. “The danger is, you can have too many doors open,” she says. “You need to self-regulate.”

It is a message that resonates with women navigating leadership roles in traditionally male-dominated spaces. Cynthia, a former police chief and now a consultant and academic, has worked internationally, climbed ranks in law enforcement, and pursued multiple degrees—including two master’s and a PhD-in-progress. “Women need to be darn near perfect at their jobs, don’t they?” she says. “Not just perfect, but above and beyond.”

She now leads the Emergence Program at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and is Principal Consultant at the Mikula-Grand Group, a security consultancy firm. Her international experience includes corporate leadership, working as director of Policing Capability, Development and Delivery for the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia. She has also been President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and has served as Chief of Police for both the City of Santa Monica and the City of Folsom.

Yet when she began her career as a police officer in Long Beach, California, she had pursued the role somewhat out of circumstance. Her father died when she was just 16, and her mother passed away a few years later, and so as a young woman she was left without guardians or financial support and could not afford to stay on into higher education. 

Cynthia Renaud at our Think Global Women event

“Law Enforcement did not come recruiting to my all-girls Catholic High School,” she explains. “I had never thought of doing this for a profession, but at 20 years old, someone suggested the career to me.  I went for a ride along, and it was really fun. We got into a vehicle pursuit, made a couple of arrests, and it was an adrenaline rush. What I viewed then as a job that allowed me to support myself and return to university part-time became a full career.  It is only in reflection that I realise what truly resonated with me about the law enforcement profession. That is, the ability to positively impact people’s lives and oftentimes, to help someone struggling through their worst and most critical moments.

“When I came into police work, people with degrees were very rare. I was already in an unusual position, being a young girl on a very large organisation that was very male dominated.”

She eventually rose to the rank of Commander at Long Beach Police Department, where she worked for almost 20 years supervising many sections, including: Criminal Investigations, Vice, East Patrol Division, the Communications Division, and the Police Academy. It was working as a patrol officer, though, that taught her leadership and teamwork skills in dangerous and unpredictable situations. When she finished her shift patrolling the streets or managing her team, she would be studying for her English Literature degree, and later her master’s. Her colleagues found it both amusing and bewildering that she would want to study the liberal arts while working as a police officer, but it was her passion and her inspiration.

“In academia I have a love of the arts, and I value being able to blend critical thinking with practitioner application,” she says. “There’s a quote on the wall in our CHDS classroom from Thucydides, a Greek scholar, who wrote: “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”

Leading international teams – challenges and opportunities

Working in Saudi Arabia for just over two years as a director in a large corporation that employed people from over eighty nationalities, Cynthia learned quickly that leading a multi-national team required a specific skill set.

“I learned by trial and error,” she says.  “While there were cultural differences to understanding how people interacted personally, I found it was equally important to understand the business culture as well.  Private sector differs from public, and multi-nationality organisational cultural norms and expectations add even more nuance to an already complex working space.”  

She realized, though, that certain leadership traits transcend this complexity. 

“Establish a clear mission for the team, construct them into a formation that is best enabled to accomplish that mission, support them as they conduct their work, be fully apprised of what they do and be ready to speak to your bosses,” she says.  “Create opportunities for bringing individual members of your team together to discuss work in a setting that also allows them to get to know each other as people.

“At the end of the day, every person is still just that – a person.  They care about their families, they want to feel connected to their team, they want to speak and be heard about work and maybe about life.  As a leader, being accessible and demonstrating that you understand these things builds cohesion among people – and this cohesion transcends any differences in culture or nationality.”

The barriers women face in professional life – and how to overcome them

Cynthia has had decades of experience managing teams in difficult environments and working in organisations which are hierarchical, and male dominated. For women eyeing leadership, three challenges stand out. 

First, visibility. 

“You have to make yourself known in your organisation,” she says. 

Second is self-belief. “We get in our own heads and in our own way. Imposter syndrome creeps in. Are we really good enough to be here? The answer is, yes you are.” 

Thirdly, it can be tough to manage the demands of a work-life balance. “A lot of us are mothers, daughters, wives and partners. We carry life responsibilities, and it is hard.”

Cynthia knows this first hand. For many years she was a single mother while leading a police department, juggling the weight of public safety with parenting. 

“Motherhood is an amazing teacher,” she says. “If you can figure out how to take care of a child and still have a career, you can figure out anything.”

Know your craft and do the hard jobs

Cynthia values education not just for the qualifications, but for the life skills it develops in you. 

“It’s not about getting a qualification to tick a box,” she says. “It is about learning how to think. Critical thinking, questioning, weighing up options—that is the value that you glean from education. It gives you the frameworks to scan the environment around you.”

That skill, she argues, has never been more vital. “We’re on the cusp of massive global changes—geopolitically, technologically. AI, large language models—this is going to fundamentally change how we live and work,” she says. “Education gives us the foresight to think about what’s coming, to look at signals and understand how they might impact us.”

She urges women to step into the difficult roles. “Take the jobs nobody else wants. The unglamorous ones. That is where you learn. Expertise is the ultimate equaliser. If you’re in HR, know everything about HR. If you’re in law enforcement, know everything about law, tactics, response. If you’re in academia, know curriculum development inside and out.”

When you are determined and tenacious, and known for delivering results, then doors start to open. “And when those doors open, don’t be afraid to walk through.”

Be prepared for discomfort

“My entire career has been outside of my comfort zone,” she says. “I have often felt uncomfortable taking on new roles and assignments, but I have developed resilience which helps me pursue those opportunities, even when I felt scared.

“Any path that involves change and being outside of one’s comfort zone has the potential for success and failure, pain and happiness, and reward and loss. That is why it is important to learn from situations that you’ve been in and keep moving forward one day at a time. It is also important to have a good support network, friends, family and faith.  Have things that feed your soul and take care of your body. Eat right, get good sleep and be healthy.”

Don’t self de-Select

Perhaps Cynthia’s most powerful message is this: women must stop taking themselves out of the race before it even begins. “We self de-select all the time,” she says. “We look at a job and think, ‘Oh, I don’t have a chance.’ Or ‘That person’s applying—I won’t bother.’”

Her advice? “Test for the job, go to the interview. Apply for the promotion. Put yourself forward. The process is free. It doesn’t cost you a dime.”

When doubt creeps in, as it will, have a support system and a group of friends who remind you that you are as good as you think you might be, and you deserve to do well and to gain the promotion.

Leadership, she believes, isn’t about fearlessness. It’s about stepping up despite the fear. “John Wayne said it best: ‘Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.’ So saddle up.”

Cynthia has seen the obstacles women encounter first hand. Some are external—visibility in male-dominated spaces, a corporate culture that still demands women be near-perfect to succeed. Others are internal. “Sometimes the biggest barrier is our own lack of self-belief,” she says. “We get in our own heads, questioning whether we’re good enough to be here.”

In terms of her own promotion, Cynthia says that having great team members and mentors have helped her apply for roles that she might otherwise not have had the confidence to interview for.

“I decided to take my first promotional test because I was working in a great team, and two of my team members were going to test, and I really loved working with them and I didn’t want to be left behind.

“I ended up getting promoted with both of those men and got to work around them in the rank of sergeant. For my next promotion to the rank of lieutenant, I think maybe some imposter syndrome came in. I wasn’t certain that I was going to test. I asked the lieutenant whom I worked for, and whom I respected very much, whether I should go for the promotion, and he said, absolutely, I think that you’re ready.

“The other thing about a promotional path is sometimes you don’t see your own promotional path, but someone else does, and they push you along that path. My advice to women, or to anyone is, if you have those trusted advisors and they’re pushing you, let them push you, trust those people around you who believe in you when maybe you don’t believe in yourself.”

Advancing Women in Leadership

A critical factor in women’s career advancement—across both public and private sectors—is engaging beyond the confines of your own immediate organisation.  Cynthia says the most effective way to do this is through professional associations relevant to your field. 

While it is important for women to support each other, she says it is equally vital to engage in associations that foster multi geographical and cross-sector collaboration. True professional growth comes from building relationships beyond homogenous groups and networking across disciplines.

“Keep in touch with people – from former departments, jobs and networking opportunities,” she says. “Check in with them from time to time. This means that you are visible in your own network if an opportunity arises, and it also means you have input from people in other fields, geographies and disciplines, which helps you have a more holistic lens and enables you to identify potential change or threats in your industry.”

Cynthia’s 30 year plus tenure in law enforcement, including command-level leadership positions in three American law enforcement organisations, now enables her to provide real insights on how to drive change in safety and security practices across public and private sector organisations. In the future, this could mean creating cities where personal safety and security is built into the fabric and design of the plans, and towns that can support the requirements of an ageing population.

She is also invested in supporting the professional advancement of other women, especially in historically male-dominated fields. Cynthia has delivered keynote speeches for several domestic and international events to help drive change, including NEOM’s Women in Leadership (2022, Saudi Arabia), and the Annual Women in Law Enforcement Conference (Ft. Worth, Texas,2016).

She contributes expertise to several industry publications, including The Homeland Security Affairs Journal, the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, and the Journal of Leadership Affairs. She has been awarded the California Legislative “Woman of the Year” award (2015), the Sacramento Business Journal “Women Who Mean Business” award (2016), the Daughters of the American Revolution “DAR Distinguished Citizen Medal” (2018), and the Folsom Chamber of Commerce “Public Service Award” (2018).

Cynthia’s tips for career progression:

Serendipity: as a woman your career path may not be as linear and may have breaks for caring or other responsibilities, but you can still actively create opportunities for yourself and when those opportunities come, have the courage to take them

Learn your craft: become an expert in your field so that you really understand your own potential, and take the tough assignments; do the jobs and the roles that no one else wants, because you will learn so much from them

Value education: it teaches you to think critically and think for yourself, which is important in every aspect of life

Build networks: have mentors, sponsors and colleagues in your chosen career and also outside with whom you can exchange ideas and “horizon scan” for threats and opportunities

Don’t self de-select: go for the job interview, put yourself forward for the promotion, don’t talk yourself out of opportunities that come your way

Be visible: fight your imposter syndrome and create a support network to get you through the tough times