Foundation & Government Relations Team

 
Cynthia Thomas
Director of Foundation and Government Relations
312.369.7356
cthomas@colum.edu

In February of 2006, Cynthia Thomas joined the staff as Assistant Director of the Foundation, Grants and Government Relations department. Cynthia brings a broad range of experience in the non-profit sector, having worked for arts, education, and human services organizations. She grew up in Northbrook, Illinois, and holds bachelors and masters degrees in Music Education.

Prior to coming to Columbia, Cynthia served as Grants Manager at Lambs Farm successfully soliciting funding from local, regional, state, and national foundations and corporations. Earlier in her career, Cynthia worked as Director of Education for two major orchestras, Columbus and Atlanta. Later, she was part of a research team on a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, hosted by Georgia State University, which studied educational partnerships between arts organizations and schools. Ten years ago she returned to Chicago and wrote a comprehensive proposal that launched a charter school for the Chicago Children's Choir.


Josie Brown
Manager of Foundation & Government Relations
312.369.7472
jbrown@colum.edu

Josie Brown comes from Columbia College's Office of Institutional Advancement after six years of work for non-profits in the Chicago area. A native of Chicago's south suburbs and a graduate of Illinois State University with a degree in Communications, she left Illinois to work in journalism in Colorado's Rocky Mountains and later in Denver. She lived later in London where she received her teaching English as a Second Language degree from Cambridge and worked for the YMCA where she piloted the organization's first integration program for refugees from Kosovo during the war. Upon relocation to Chicago, she worked for the Chicago Abused Women Coalition as the Assistant Development Director before taking a position with The Field Museum as the Corporate Stewardship Manager, working with major corporations on the museum's exhibitions such as Machu Picchu, Pompeii, Jacqueline Kennedy and King Tut. Just before working with Columbia, she spent a summer at Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland where she worked as a research assistant in a criminology research study with juvenile offenders. She is still involved in causes for Chicago's battered women.


Lona Livingston
Government Relations Liaison
312.369.8552
llivingston@colum.edu