Cynthia Cardona Elected as President of the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation
The Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, Inc., a tax-exempt organization supported by Eli Lilly and Company, has elected Cynthia Cardona as its president. Additionally, Lilly has selected Cardona to serve as senior director of social impact for the company.
As president of the Lilly Foundation, Cardona will lead its philanthropic activities to advance racial justice, improve educational outcomes for underserved students, enhance global health outcomes and improve the quality of life for people in Indianapolis. As head of Lilly's social impact team, she will lead the company's civic and investor engagement, employee giving and volunteerism, corporate responsibility reporting, global health partnerships and disaster relief efforts.
"Cynthia is a trusted and valued member of our company with a passion for diversity, equity and inclusion. I'm confident that she will leverage her considerable professional and unique lived experiences to advance Lilly's volunteer, philanthropic, and social impact work to make lives better for people here in Indianapolis and around the globe," said Leigh Ann Pusey, senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications.
Cardona first came to Lilly in 2001 as a pre-MBA diversity fellowship intern and became a full-time employee in 2004. Her experience has spanned from working in primary care sales to holding a variety of consumer and brand marketing leadership positions, including chief marketing officer of Lilly Japan. Most recently, Cardona worked on Lilly's corporate affairs team on strategic enterprise-wide projects, including developing Lilly's corporate messaging and health equity framework.
Cardona serves on the board of a local nonprofit, La Plaza, Inc., which provides and connects the Central Indiana Latino population to critical health, educational and other social services. She has earned several degrees from Stanford University, including a B.S. in civil engineering, M.S. in civil/structural engineering, and an MBA with a certificate in public management.
About Eli Lilly and Company Foundation
To extend Lilly's reach and impact, the company established the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation in 1968. The Foundation is a private, tax-exempt organization that makes strategic and philanthropic investments consistent with Lilly's purpose. Eli Lilly and Company Foundation supports improving global health, strengthening communities, improving educational opportunities and combating racial injustice and inequity.
About Eli Lilly and Company
Lilly is a global health care leader that unites caring with discovery to create medicines that make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by a man committed to creating high-quality medicines that meet real needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Across the globe, Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. To learn more about Lilly, please visit us at lilly.com and lilly.com/news.