Cynthia Saltzman (M.A. and Ph.D., Columbia; B.A., Bennington College) completed her doctoral work in anthropology at Columbia University. She has taught at Barnard College, Rutgers University at Camden, Rosemont College, and the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Social Work. Dr. Saltzman has been a visiting scholar at the Rutgers Institute for Research on Women, a postdoctoral fellow in Judaic studies at Yale University, and a visiting fellow at Yale's Institute for Social and Policy Studies.

She has done institutional research as a consultant with Demographic Perspectives on students' views and life at Bryn Mawr College and Harvard University. Most recently, she worked on an ethnographic research project on parents' work and children's welfare under the sponsorship of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work's Professor Roberta Iversen and her grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Dr. Saltzman's writing has focused on women and Judaism, and the history of women and unions at Yale.

Dr. Saltzman is currently working on two projects regarding children's acquisition of religious values and their engagement in community activism. One consulting project is for Philadelphia Jewish Children's and Family Services and focuses on helping pre-teens conduct oral histories of elderly Jews and transform those histories into a theater production. The other concerns helping a Jewish day school establish a context for family-education by creating channels for parental participation in celebratory, ritual events, and community involvement.