Photo by Trip Burns.
At 9 in the morning on school days, you can find Cindy Townsend with her class of seventh graders at Jackson Preparatory School. As director of the school's Global Leadership Institute, she is responsible for providing historical perspectives of iconic leaders to her students.
In the institute, students study how these women and men used their leadership skills to bring their core values to fruition. Townsend says she charges her students to begin by making a statement of "what they stand for and what they stand against."
Since leadership is a broad area of study, Townsend knows she must engage her students on their level to help them learn how leadership skills can affect their lives.
Through Jackson Prep's Global Leadership Institute, she hopes to encourage her students' potential. "I love every day what I see in the eyes of students," she says.
Townsend develops their leadership skills by having student work with their passions. "I take them on a journey inside themselves to learn their personality, leadership style, their passions—how they are wired up," she says. " ... I like the way they are wired up; (I) just want to refine it."
The Jackson native went to school in Texas at Baylor University. She came back to Jackson and finished her undergraduate in music and education and her master's in education at Mississippi College.
She moved to Louisiana in 2002 where she worked as the director of women's missions and ministry at Louisiana Baptist Statewide Convention for four years. In 2006, she moved back to Texas and worked as the acting executive director for Hope for the Hungry, a nonprofit focused on feeding orphans. In 2008, Townsend's husband, Bill Townsend, was in talks with about joining Mississippi College as their vice president for advancement and legal counsel to the president, and Jackson Prep offered her a position to begin building its new leadership institute.
Since returning to Jackson in 2008, Townsend and her husband are interested in promoting community. "We want people to see the good things about Mississippi, our generosity, our hospitality—that we are not in every way back in time," she says.
The skills Townsend teaches in the classroom contribute to her students developing a greater appreciation for their city. "(My students) will have a broader view ... about what it is they can do to make it a better place—to find their niche," she says.
It is in finding that niche that Townsend finds her purpose: "I believe ... that every person is a leader," she says. "I don't think it's just positional leadership that matters. I think we all lead in some way. ... Even the quiet introvert might write the novel that rocks the world in some way."
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