Cindy Gannon is the senior associate director of athletics/senior woman administrator for Southeast Missouri State University's athletic department. Gannon is an alumnae of Southeast and earned her bachelor's degree in 1985 and master's degree in 1988.

Before joining Southeast's administration staff in 2005, Gannon was the university's volleyball coach for 16 seasons and still holds the program record for wins (366) and Ohio Valley Conference Championships (eight).

In her time as an administrator for Southeast, Gannon founded the Walk for Redhawks in 2007, originally known as the Walk for Women, which is an event that supports athletic scholarships.

What led you to Southeast?

I was a student here. I came to Southeast, I went to a junior college and played basketball. And then I came to Southeast -- I wanted to be a teacher. My whole life was I wanted to be an educator, and so I chose Southeast because of the reputation that it had, and it was close to home because I'm originally from De Soto, Missouri. So my intentions were to come here, finish my degree. I wasn't going to play a sport, I was going to continue on and get my education degree, go back home, teach and that was kind of my plan. Well I got here and ended up trying out for the volleyball team, and made the volleyball team. Actually just fell in love with Cape Girardeau, southeast Missouri and everything that it represented, so it ended up -- the rest is history basically because this is my 29th year here. I ended up having some great opportunities to continue on in coaching and I did that for several years and then got an opportunity to get into administration.

What do you all do for Walk for Redhawks?

Our first intentions for the walk, it was Walk for Women, and we started it as a women's event to enhance the women's scholarship program. Title IX has a lot of regulations as it relates to scholarships, and so I wanted to make sure when we had this event, I had a group of women that I call our Strike Force, and they're women from the university and from the community that really just help drive this. So as a committee we came together and we said, "Realistically this effort is helping all of our student-athletes," because Title IX requires us to distribute our scholarships proportionally. So to realistically say we were only raising money for women wasn't really true because we were giving it proportionally to all of our student-athletes. So we talked about it and we said, "Let's use it as a day to celebrate women's athletics." For seven years we did that and last year, the committee came together and said, "Walk for Women is a little confusing because the walk's for everybody, so let's change it to Walk for Redhawks." And so that's where we are today, and really it's about celebrating all of our student-athletes and the great accomplishments that they get to experience by having an opportunity to compete for Southeast and have a scholarship.

What does orchestrating an event like that demand from you?

Well in the beginning it was extremely stressful because when you start an event from the beginning, there's no groundwork. There's nothing there. You just have to say, "All right, we're going to go for it," and I was so nervous the first year. Kim Mothershead was my first honorary chair, and she used to be on the Board of Regents here. She was my rock starting this whole process. ... We still honor Kim, she passed away a few years ago, but we still honor her with the Kim Mothershead Award for the team that raises the most money. But after the first year it kind of grew some momentum, people started becoming familiar with it. ... I started it and I organized it, but I'm not going to take full credit for it because it takes a lot of people to pull off an event like that, and our staff really stepped up last year and really helped. So I'm excited. April 16 is our next walk so we'll start ramping things up here shortly and truly try to get some momentum as we go forward.

What was your relationship like with Kim Mothershead?

She was the most inspirational, wonderful woman that I've ever met. I still stay in touch with her daughters because they stay involved with the walk. Although they no longer live in Cape Girardeau, we still email and write back and forth and I try and keep them involved because they have what's called "Team Kim." I took a chance -- we were friends, but we went to lunch and I said, "Kim, I've got this project that I want," and I had this big folder of papers and I said, "I want to ask you -- if you don't want to do it that's fine, you just tell me. I want to ask you if you'll be my first honorary chair." She looked at me and said, "We're going to make this thing work," and we did. She actually was the chair for two years for the event, but just an inspirational and awesome woman and there was never anything that she didn't think she could accomplish. When she got sick, she was the most inspirational person. If anybody was an inspiration during her time fighting cancer, it was her. She was the most courageous person I've ever met.

How have you been working with interim athletic director Brady Barke this year?

Well I call myself the historian of the department, that's a nice way of saying I probably [have] the most longevity in the department. It's an interesting position that I'm in. I've served in the interim position twice, and where I'm at in my career, I really feel like that I hopefully provide mentorship to some of our younger staff. We always want to evolve into being better, but there's always a part that you need to have that history and how did you get to this point -- where some of the landmines are and where some of the things that have happened in the past that have led us to where we are. So I hope that I provide that stability to the department, I hope that Brady feels that I support him in this role and that my objective here is to do what's best for Southeast Missouri State. I don't think you stay someplace 29 years and not truly love a place, and I can truly say it has been an honor for me to have an opportunity to serve Southeast Missouri State for this long, and hopefully have a few good years left.

What would you say you are most proud of with this department?

I think what I'm most proud of is the fact that one, I feel like we have played a huge role in the Pink Up [Cape] effort. It started with our volleyball program Dig for Life, evolved into Pink Up Cape and I always feel like hopefully Southeast Missouri State played a big part in starting that. My mother died of breast cancer in 2000, so that was kind of the mood I had is to push and sell this to Saint Francis and they bought it. Our student-athletes are very involved in that movement and that effort, and they'll be putting lights up down Broadway and all of our teams will be wearing pink uniforms. So I know there's a lot of great causes out there, but it's just very humbling to know that Southeast Missouri State athletics played a part in the beginning of that.

I'm also proud of the fact that how many student-athletes we have that have gone on to do some great things. Wins and losses are important and everybody looks at the wins and losses, but I always tell our students [that] wins and our national championships are when they walk across the stage with their degree in their hand, and they go out and they make a real impact on the world and in their communities and they learned some of those skills here at Southeast by learning to give back. I'm also proud of our improvements in gender equity and the commitment we have made to our women's programs to provide a great experience for our student-athletes. It's a great opportunity, I always wanted to be an educator, I feel like I'm still an educator, just sitting in a little different seat, but it's all about the students and what opportunities we give them to become the people that they are when they leave here.

What does being a leader mean to you?

I think being a leader is serving as a role model first of all. I think people look at you and they lead by example. They look at you and see, "Are you willing to do the things you're asking from them?" I try to be a good listener and I try to help our coaches be goal-oriented and I try and not lead but work with them. I think it's easy for you to sit behind a desk and say, "Do this, do that. This is what you need to do," but I think my experience as a coach gives me a great insight into what they're really experiencing.

I feel like my leadership style is more of a goal-oriented leadership style of let's set our goals and let's figure out a way to get to those goals. A lot of my leadership skills came from how I coached when I was a volleyball coach in that I had to lead them by example. If I was asking them to exhibit sportsmanship then I had to exhibit those behaviors as well, so that's kind of what I try to do as a leader. I try to say, "Let's do this together." There's sometimes opportunities coaches -- you have to make decisions for them sometimes, but I very rarely try to do that without them being involved in the process.

What is a mistake you see other leaders make and how do you try to avoid making that mistake?

I think a lot of times leaders will have a vision and have a goal, but they don't realize it's going to take a lot of people to help them get there. Not one person can accomplish what we try to do every day. This is a team. We're a team just as football is a team, volleyball is a team -- our administration and our coaches, we are all a team. We all have got to get on the ship and we've got to be rolling in the right direction, and I think sometimes leaders don't communicate what the goal and objective is well enough so that everybody on the team can be on the same page. So then you get people going in a different direction. Really the most important thing about being a leader is actually helping people get with you to where you want to go, not, "We're going to get here, and you just follow." It's team building and we have to lead by example as far as the team we want our coaches to put together. Administrators, we want to have that same team.