Cecelia Bolles joined head coach Carol Owens staff as director of basketball operations in August of 2006. Bolles handles the day-to-day operations of the women's basketball office.

Bolles has spent the last 30 years in the DeKalb community. Before coming to Northern Illinois, she gained a wealth of experience in the administrative field at several DeKalb businesses.

She came to NIU after spending three years as a human resources representative at Exel Logistics in DeKalb. While at Exel, she was responsible for screening prospective employees and conducting interviews. She also assisted associates with benefits enrollment and ensured communication was continuous with vendors.

Before joining Exel, Bolles was a branch manager at Adecco Employment Company. There, she brought in 50 new accounts and negotiated pricing with clients. She was responsible for staff development and recruitment and training and supervising all staff members. Bolles also handled budgets and payroll, as well as benefits and insurance.

Bolles spent three years as the regional account manager, customer operations at Pharmacia Monsanto of DeKalb. At Pharmacia Monsanto, she provided customer operations management for key regional and independent accounts up to $20 million.

She was also involved in the training aspect at Pharmacia Monsanto. She trained the customer operations staff and Southern team on SAP. She developed training materials and processes for seed training.

She also spent three years at DeKalb Genetics working as a business team specialist at the customer service center. She trained, motivated and supervised a full-time staff of six team members. She developed and managed training materials for SAP.

Prior to joining DeKalb Genetics, Bolles worked in the marketing department at NIU. She assisted with promotions and marketing for athletic events. She is married to Dr. Larry Bolles. Dr. Bolles is director of judicial affairs at NIU. The two have been married for 29 years and have one son, Jason (22).