2024 Graduate College Fall Commencement

Cynthia W. Turner ‘90, Ph.D., CPA will deliver the address at the 2024 Graduate College ceremony Friday, Dec. 13, 2024, at 6 p.m. in First Horizon Coliseum’s Main Arena.

More than 1,200 students, including more than 300 graduate students, will participate in the Fall 2024 commencement ceremonies, which will be livestreamed.

The university has instituted a clear bag regulation for all commencement ceremonies. All attendees are required to abide by the regulation and are subject to bag size and type limits. The university reserves the right to impose the regulation at its discretion. 

Turner is the associate dean of access, engagement and outreach of The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business and an Ernst & Young LLP (EY) Faculty Fellow. She graduated summa cum laude in 1990 from North Carolina A&T with a B.S. in accounting. In 1994, she received an M.A. in accounting from The Ohio State University and, in 1995, became the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in accounting at Ohio State. She was also a member of the inaugural cohort of The PhD Project founded in 1994 by KPMG.

An award-winning educator, Turner spent 17 years on the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before returning to Ohio State in 2013. In 2019, she became the first African American woman to join the leadership team at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business as assistant dean and chief diversity officer where she created, led and executed the college’s strategy for inclusive excellence. Her efforts helped double private funding for Fisher scholarships and inclusive initiatives; facilitate a formal partnership with the city to support pre-collegiate programming for underserved and first-generation high school students; develop programming to engage Fisher’s diverse alumni; and create new inclusive leadership course offerings at Fisher.

As associate dean, Turner continues advancing Fisher’s inclusive excellence initiatives while overseeing access, engagement and outreach programs for key Fisher stakeholders. Her many honors include a 2023 lifetime achievement award for advancing equity and inclusion throughout her career; selection as a 2023 Power of Change Honoree by The Ohio Society of CPAs; a 2023 Kenneth Bouyer Difference Maker in Diversity Award from the Business School Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Collaborative; and Ohio State’s Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award in 2018 for her work to double the diversity within the undergraduate program in two years.

As a researcher, Turner’s scholarly work has been published in her field’s most respected journals. Prior to her academic career, she was a practicing accountant at EY. She sits on the boards of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio, Women for Economic and Leadership Development, Community Impact Council, and PatientPoint Foundation. She is also a member of the American Accounting Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the National Association of Black Accountants, and the Business School DEI Collaborative.

Turner is an ordained Christian minister and an 18-year breast cancer survivor. Married to professional jazz guitarist Kevin Turner, she is mother to stepdaughter Kia and sons Julien and Justen, who make up the award-winning filmmaking duo the Turner Brothers.