For more than 20 years, Cynthia Barton Rabe was a marketing executive for technology and consumer companies including Ralston Purina, Eveready, and Intel, before going on to found Zero-G, an innovation and strategy consulting firm. She is the author of a nonfiction work, The Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine and What Smart Companies are Doing About It, which won critical and industry praise. Also an accomplished musician and composer, Cindy died in 2011, shortly after completing The Messiah Gene, her first novel. She lived with her husband and daughter in Portland, Oregon.