BIO

Mijounga Chang is a community-centered social designer, learning and impact strategist and cultural organizer. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at Queens College/CUNY where she teaches an urban studies seminar. In her design-based social practice and research, facilitation, writing and teaching, she integrates her interdisciplinary background in design and media arts, human rights/social justice philanthropy, nonprofit and community building which spans 20+ years in New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.

Using participatory design methods and a co-creation process to catalyze place-based collaborative innovation, Mijounga facilitates sessions and workshops, conversations and other group engagements to enable connection and activate strategy around a shared vision with diverse partners from and across the social/nonprofit, public and private sectors. Her recent project includes leading a first-ever NYC-wide community engagement and research project, convening and collaborating with AAPI leaders on community-driven solutions to increased anti-AAPI hate and envisioning community safety in the wake of the COVID pandemic with The Asian American Foundation. 

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 roles, 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 funder work 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 Director of Organizational Learning at New Left Accelerator, a national capacity-building organization that supports the most impacted community groups building political power for immigrant and gender rights, racial and economic justice via an acceleration program, trainings and other resources.  

As a cultural worker, Mijounga has championed truth-based storytelling through writing, radio, film and other art projects. Her experience includes serving as a panelist for New York Foundation for the Arts and Flushing Town Hall for their grants program to fund Queens-based artists. Mijounga was a member of Asia Pacific Forum, co-producing and co-hosting the community radio program covering Asian diasporic news and culture on NY’s WBAI. She has also partnered with US and international filmmakers/ producers on production, exhibition and distribution to share underrepresented stories at independent media organizations, including Independent Television Service, Center for Asian American Media and Women Make Movies. 

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 peace on the Korean peninsula, Mijounga’s identity and work have been dynamically shaped by a plurality of cultures and realities. 

Mijounga holds an MA in Design Systems from Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a BA in Subaltern Cultural Studies from Mount Holyoke College.