BIO

Mijounga Chang is a social designer and strategy partner who connects the power of design, learning and collaboration to achieve impact and transformation. In her practice and work, she integrates skills acquired from her interdisciplinary background in design and the arts, philanthropy, nonprofit and community building spanning 20+ years in New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. 

Mijounga specializes in mission-driven culture and strategy work and catalyzing place-based community innovation using participatory design methods and processes. Centering a creative, inclusive approach, she co-creates with and brings together diverse partners from and across the social/nonprofit, public and private sectors for optimal collaboration, learning and impact.

In the philanthropic sector, Mijounga has been a fellow, consultant and staff at justice/rights-based foundations including Meyer Memorial Trust, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. In her various functions, she has supported human rights in programming, advanced an organization-wide initiative on racial justice and DEI, and developed effective international grantmaking processes and trainings. Her latest work with funders includes leading projects to deepen organizational learning and culture rooted in equity and inclusion, designing and facilitating processes to synthesize collective learning on Native/tribes communities in Oregon and examining how funders can reimagine risk in philanthropy.

In the nonprofit world, Mijounga recently served as the inaugural Director of Organizational Learning at New Left Accelerator, a national capacity-building organization that supports the growing 501 (c)(4) sector and community-based groups building political power for immigrant and gender rights, racial and economic justice via an acceleration program, trainings and other resources.  

Mijounga’s creative practice includes work that explores race and culture, intersectional identities, belonging and history. As a cultural worker and producer, she has championed truth-based storytelling through film, radio and other media. Mijounga has produced for public radio at Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI-NY, and has partnered with independent filmmakers to produce and tell underrepresented stories at Independent Television Service, Center for Asian American Media and Women Make Movies.

As a diasporic Korean-born woman raised in Queens, New York, who began her social justice journey in the 1990’s organizing with NY’s AAPI communities for racial/economic/gender justice, LGBTQ and immigrant rights, and for peace on the Korean peninsula, Mijounga’s life and work have been dynamically shaped by a plurality of cultures, communities and realities. 

Mijounga holds an MA in Collaborative Design/Design Systems from Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a BA in Subaltern Cultural Studies (self-designed major) from Mount Holyoke College.