Cindy L. Parrish, PhD, is an experienced educator, playwright, multimedia performer, screenwriter, and award-winning filmmaker. She has two incredible daughters, Emma and Fiona, and a granddaughter, Maeve. Together with four adolescent girls and Meg Agnew, Cindy created the play, Heroic Girlz which she then adapted to, and directed for, the screen. Heroic Girlz and Making History, a documentary about the project, won awards from the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Moondance Film Festival, and have screened at the United Nations. In 2011, Cindy gave a TEDx talk about the Heroic Girlz Education project. 

Cindy’s has written numerous stageplays and screenplays including the award-winning Magic Planet, a children’s stage play directed by Meg Agnew; River Rats, a family film airing on Showtime; and WomAnimal, a multimedia, one-woman show. A professional storyteller, Cindy is a founding member of the storytelling troupe The Snickering Witches and the performance poetry troupe Archetext. Cindy was delighted to serve as the artistic director of Act Now, a not-for-profit empowering adolescent girls through improvised, communal writing, and movie-making. An educator for more than 30 years, Cindy now develops curriculum and creates educational and therapeutic digital content for more than 30,000 justice-impacted learners in jails and prisons across the United States.

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