Cynt Marshall usually gets her way.
But the 62-year-old CEO of the Dallas Mavericks is glad she didn’t this time.
On Tuesday, her hardcover autobiography will hit the market. But You’ve Been Chosen: Thriving Through the Unexpected isn’t exactly the book she intended to write when she started the project four years ago.
Marshall’s first book was going to be an inspirational guide for people rocked by cancer.
She had been diagnosed with stage 3 invasive colon cancer — one lymph node away from stage 4 — just days after her 51st birthday. Her oncologist in North Carolina told her that without chemotherapy, she had only a 25% chance of making it to her 56th.
Having beaten the odds, she wanted to write a book based on the online journal she kept on the CaringBridge website during her six months and 12 rounds of aggressive treatment.
“Over the years, people would call and ask me for that journal,” Marshall said. “I would print the pages and send it. I felt a book about surviving cancer was what the Lord had put in my heart and meant for me to do.”
But her Dallas literary agent, Jan Miller, and Mary Reynics, executive editor of Random House Publishing Group in New York, had more expansive ideas. They insisted that Marshall write about the underpinning experiences that — as Marshall calls it — “equipped” her to navigate through cancer and come out stronger than before.
“Where we had the rub was they wanted me to tell the corporate stuff or the whole memoir/family thing, and I pushed back,” Marshall said. “It got down to the wire where I was asking them to pull it. I didn’t want to lose the cancer story.”
They found middle ground.
Her stories of battling cancer would be the core of the book, but with many more gripping details of her growing up and early professional years than she’d been prepared to tell.
The result is a memoir that’s intensely personal, often raw, rooted in unwavering faith and laced with Marshall’s relentless positivity and humor. There’s trial and triumph, pain and pure joy.
Taking her book to heart
Marshall recorded her book on tape instead of having a hired voice read it.
“It made me realize how much stuff has happened in my life,” she said.
“Stuff” is her euphemism for not just fighting cancer but her father’s violent abuse, her extensive repertoire of Black woman “firsts,” her tragedy of four miscarriages, her loss of a newborn daughter and how she and her husband, Kenny, came to adopt and cherish four foster-care children.
“It was the first time I got to really internalize the book,” Marshall said. “Reading through all of those life stories as well as the cancer stories in two days was exhausting. I went through a range of emotions.
“Now that Jan and Mary made me do what they made me do, I think the audience will be anybody who is going through any kind of adversity. It will make them dig deep and it will show them that they are equipped to handle it and can come out better on the other side.”
Reynics said she learned volumes about “leadership, humility and perseverance” while working with Marshall on the book.
“When readers hear about her often bumpy and winding path before cancer, they will understand intimately why she was ready to conquer the disease, and I hope, believe they can face their personal challenges with as much determination, faith and optimism as Cynt does.
Miller agrees: “Cynt knows exactly who she is and what she wants to say. I know it’s going to be a blockbuster.”
Marshall calls the book “the good, the great, the bad and the ugly parts” of her life’s journey.
She writes about racism — overt and covert — during her nearly 36-year career at AT&T. But she also credits career-making mentorship from corporate leaders and colleagues that helped her rise through the corporate giant’s executive ranks.
She retired from the communications giant as senior vice president of human resources and chief diversity officer in 2017.
Mark Cuban hired Marshall the next year to fix the team’s toxic office culture in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct. She became the only Black woman CEO of any National Basketball Association franchise.
When her husband, Kenny, told her that Mark Cuban had called her, Cynt famously responded, “Who’s that?”
Battered, never defeated
When Marshall’s life was upended by her cancer diagnosis, she immediately called her mother, Carolyn Gardner, the rock of truth and spiritual soul in Marshall’s life.
“When I got cancer, my mom said, ‘This will be about God’s glory. You will tell this story one day,’” Marshall said. “She showed me what grace and grit and resilience look like. She was a true role model of faith and action. She’s a tough sister.”
Her mom was right, Marshall said. “There was a reason the Lord had chosen me to have cancer, just as I’d been chosen for everything else that happened in my life.”
Hence the title of the book.
You’ve Been Chosen is dedicated to Marshall’s mother, an 86-year-old retired school administrator and resource librarian who raised two boys and four girls in the Easter Hill projects of Richmond, Calif.
Marshall studied an old photo of her at 6 with her three sisters decked out in Easter outfits. It’s the first time she’s ever noticed that she’s wearing pearls in that shot, and it gives her chills.
Pearls have become her signature of strength, but she never remembered having her first strand.
“Despite all the drama, I had a good childhood. My mother was serious about that,” Marshall said. “She had me in pearls in elementary school. That’s crazy.”
The family lived under constant threats from Cynt’s father, William Smith, a hustler who routinely battered her mother and terrified their six kids.
In 1975, her mother secretly filed for divorce. Her father found out and went on a rampage that had to be broken up by police.
Carolyn Smith fled with her three youngest children — including 15-year-old Cynt — encamping at her eldest daughter’s one-bedroom apartment. They spent that summer looking over their shoulders.
Just before school started, Cynt’s father tracked down her mother at the hospital, where the family was waiting for their youngest daughter to come out of knee surgery. Her father’s fury ignited once again. When Cynt stepped in to protect her mother, he hit Cynt so hard that it shattered her nose.
“Blood went everywhere,” Marshall recalled. “You can always look for the upside. Fortunately, we were at the hospital, and they were able to rush me into surgery. The doctor told my mom, ‘If that bone had gone up another centimeter, we probably wouldn’t have your daughter.’
“I ended up OK, but I still have the scar on my nose,” she said stoically. “It is what it is.”
Her father wasn’t arrested in either assault. It was a different era back then, Marshall said.
Her father died of colon cancer the year before her diagnosis.
She traveled cross-country to her hometown for his funeral, partly to show her children that it’s important to respect their elders.
But there was something else.
She asked the local funeral director, an old friend, whether he was certain that her father was in the casket.
“I guess some part of me held on to the scared-to-death child, and she was worried that William Smith might start popping up again,” Marshall said.
College inculcation
Marshall’s life has been an impressive string of onlys and firsts.
In 1977, Cynt became the first Black girl to be president of a graduating class at Kennedy High School in Richmond.
At the University of California, Berkeley, she was the first Black member of Delta Gamma — in a “sea of 110-pound white sorority sisters.”
“Being a DG was a great cultural experience on many levels for me because I had people around me who accepted me as different but also accepted me as me,” she said. “They opened themselves up to me so that I could know more about them.
“That’s what needs to happen in the world. We need to open up to each other, accept each other and learn from each other. It helped me find myself and solidify my place on the Berkeley campus.”
Being the only Black member of the Golden Bears varsity cheerleading squad taught her another lasting lesson.
It took her two attempts to make the squad. She totally messed up her second tryout routine but kept on going as though nothing had happened.
“It taught me to never give up. Just go after it and get it. It also taught me that it’s OK to mess up — just recover from it.”
Losing ‘Special K’
One of the most poignant parts of the book is about how Cynt and her husband, Kenny, went through the fires of hell trying to start a family.
The couple endured four dangerous miscarriages before Cynt gave birth to a one-pound, two-ounce premature daughter in 1994. They named her Karolyn after Cynt’s mother but with a “K” for Kenny.
They nicknamed her “Special K” as she fought for her life for six months in the neonatal intensive care unit of Children’s Hospital Oakland.
“Cancer was the second-largest life trial of my life,” Marshall said. “The first was, of course, when my daughter passed away, which was 28 years ago last month.”
To fill the hole in their hearts, the Marshalls adopted two foster-care boys and two girls — one after the other — who’ve answered their prayers for children to dote on.
She posted on Twitter on the anniversary of Special K’s death: “I always take August 21 to thank God for bringing me through the storm and for making my family in a way that only He could do. God chose us to be the parents of some precious children who needed us. And we needed them.”
A higher hair calling
Hair is more than Marshall’s fashion statement. It’s her declaration of independence.
She started her professional career 41 years ago in San Francisco at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, which became AT&T. Her first week on the job, her boss’ female boss chastised Marshall for wearing braids and red shoes that she said were unprofessional and “too ethnic.”
“My mom and my oldest sister stayed up all night with me to help me take down my braids,” said Marshall, who had to borrow “more appropriate” clothes and shoes from her sister to wear the next day.
Nineteen years later, another female boss called to tell her that she’d just been promoted to an officer of the company, but that Marshall needed to crop her already short hair even shorter. She gave Marshall the name of a suitable clothing brand and told her to wear more white because it would complement the color of her skin.
While her boss was at it, she told her to go by Cynthia or Cindy because Cynt wasn’t businesslike.
“I’ve spent my whole career not really being able to do me,” Marshall said. “So on the 40th anniversary of my professional career — July of 2021, my third year with the Mavs — I got braids, and I did this whole Instagram post about authenticity.”
Her social media message to employers: “Accept the people and hairdos that walk through your doors.”
To everybody else: “Do You! Authenticity matters.”
After that, Marshall decided to pop in long braid extensions a few times every year. “It’s easy in the summertime and when I’m traveling a lot,” she said. “But they also represent my heritage.”
Cuban didn’t bat an eye the first time he saw Marshall in box braids.
“That’s one of the many reasons I love him,” she said. “He’s all about authenticity. Whoever shows up shows up.”
Two weeks ago, she took out her braids to look more like the Cynt on the cover of her book..
“I’ll probably bring them back for the holidays,” she said. “I’m celebrating who I am now from 40 years ago when they told me to get rid of them. My message: ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’”
