I am incredibly excited to announce another keynote for Connect 2020: Mia Birdsong!
Mia Birdsong is a pathfinder, community curator, and storyteller who steadily engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. She has a gift for making visible and leveraging the brilliance of everyday people so that our collective gifts reach larger spheres of influence, evoke cultural and political change, and create wellbeing for everyone. Her approach marks a departure from traditional, institutionalized change work which seeks solutions from select “experts”, people often removed from the problems they’re charged to solve.
Let me back up a little bit: we have a quarterly book club inside TheCR Network, and our Q3 read was Mia Birdsong’s “How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community.”
I was immediately drawn to the book’s focus on humanity’s inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up — literally and figuratively — points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want. This is what shapes human language and influences the way we communicate with one another.
As we started thinking about voices who could provide both inspiration and a fresh perspective on community to our Connect participants I couldn’t stop thinking about Mia Birdsong. Her message of accountability and connectedness dovetails so perfectly with what we are thinking about, and celebrating at Connect this year: changing the way the world works.
I can’t wait to hear Mia Birdsong’s perspectives on how “showing up” makes us all stronger. I hope you’ll join us for her keynote session in October.
