Think Women’s 40 Outstanding Global Women 2025 | Cynthia Renaud, Mikula-Grand Group
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.
11 March 2025
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“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.
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