Cynthia J. Mitchell Scott was born in Boston, MA and attended public schools in Cambridge and Boston. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute (BFA) and the Florence Heller School (MS in Social Welfare) at Brandeis University where her field of interest was labor market issues impacting black women workers. She has taught social studies as an adjunct professor at Bridgewater State College and Salem State College.

In partnership with the Roxbury unit of the Boston YWCA, Ms. Scott developed upward mobility training programs for minority women including designing a highly successful promotional opportunity project for women under contract with a major bank. She has held administrative positions in employment and training programs at the US Department of Labor, the Job Training and Partnership program in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Private Industry Council in Northern Cook County.

Upon retirement from an administrative position at Roxbury Community College in Boston, she continued working in employment and training as a consultant and also returned to her original passion for art. A figurative painter, she has exhibited in many venues in and around Boston and Cambridge and in Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond. With several black women artists she founded an informal artists group – the New England Women of Color Artists and mounted exhibitions in and around the Boston/Cambridge area and in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she is researching slave life during the antebellum period in preparation for creating a series of related paintings.