About

Mission:

To empower workers and leaders in mission-driven organizations to creatively navigate change and uncertainty through compassionate reflection and committed action, embracing and transforming the experience of impermanence from fear into opportunity.

Emily Ball Cicchini is a writer, speaker, and experienced leader who helps people, teams, and organizations navigate continuous change with compassion, clarity, and purpose. She holds a BFA from The Theatre School/DePaul and an MFA and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A Michener Fellow. Her work in education and technology has been recognized by the U.S. Library of Congress, the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities, NASA Space Consortium, the New Media Consortium, the Federal Department of Education, the Texas Education Agency, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, the Austin Business Journal, and the International Communication Association. She brings decades of experience serving nonprofits and higher education locally and globally, often collaborating with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses, leading program innovation and securing over $25 million in contributed and earned revenue. She has a deep commitment to impactful, strategic, values-based work, informed by research in literature, communication science and social psychology. She co-founded the National Book Access Association, a network of over 200 book access organizations, and serves as Executive Director of BookSpring, a nonprofit dedicated to igniting a love of reading in children and families since 1974. She is also an award winning playwright and screenwriter, with many years of creative teaching experience in formal and informal settings. She lives in the beautiful Texas Hill Country with her family and enjoys movement to music, gardening, and space watching.