Joined UE November 2011
Cindy Butler’s expertise includes building organizational resources, developing capacities, and ensuring nonprofit sustainability through creative funding. She uses partnerships to initiate creative ventures, and helps Boards hone and expand visions. “I’m excited by the work that the Alternatives to Marriage Project has done to improve the unfair treatment of unmarrieds,” says Butler. “I am very impressed by the commitment of the staff and Board of Directors, and see great opportunities to build upon UE’s success and forward momentum. As the 2010 Census data shows that the majority of households are unmarried, this is the perfect time for Alternatives to Marriage to expand its outreach.”
Cindy Butler has over twenty years of nonprofit experience and has built a career focused on improving the lives of disadvantaged people. Most recently, as co-founder and Executive Director of The Village Net , Cindy built a nonprofit dedicated to supporting women in villages in Kenya and Ghana as they work toward uplifting their families from poverty. She developed relationships with nonprofit, corporate and government entities to help sustain The Village Net and created a microloan program that provided over 200 women with loans in increasing amounts.
Prior to The Village Net, she served as Director of the Women’s Business Center at Community Capital Development, where she mentored 800 entrepreneurs and trained another 5,300 through partnerships with community organizations. Before coming to Seattle from Washington, DC, Cindy worked as an employee of, consultant to, and volunteer for Board member of nonprofits including the National Organization on Disability, The National Women’s Law Center, NARAL, and the National Leadership Coalition on AIDS. She was an early director of DC Central Kitchen, a national model for food recycling and homeless training, whose programs now serve 4,800 meals per day to disadvantaged children and adults.
Butler earned her B.A. at the University of Maryland and a Masters of International Business at Seattle University.