Mia Birdsong

Mia has spent more than 20 years fighting for the self-determination and pointing out the brilliant adaptations of everyday people. In her current role as Co-Director of Family Story, Mia is updating this nation’s outdated picture of families in America. Previously, Mia worked as the Vice President of the Family Independence Initiative, where she created and curated the Torchlight Prize.

Mia, whose 2015 TED talk, The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True, has been viewed over 1.3 million times, has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Salon and On Being and has guest lectured at UC Berkeley. She co-founded Canerow, a resource for people dedicated to raising children of color in a world that reflects the spectrum of who they are. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and an inaugural Ascend Fellow of The Aspen Institute.

Mia is a modern Renaissance woman. She has spent time organizing to abolish prisons, teaching teenagers about sex and drugs, interviewing literary luminaries like Edwidge Danticat, David Foster Wallace and John Irving, and attending births as a midwifery apprentice. These are some of the many reasons that Mia was recognized as one of Colorlines’ “15 Remarkable Women of Color Who Rocked 2015.”