Changing the Game and Bringing Diversity to Bookshelves - An Interview with Mia Wenjen

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Mia Wenjen’s note to our alum community about a book she had authored, Changing the Game: Asian Pacific American Female Athletes”. Drilling down to research further, I noticed that Mia was also the founder of Multicultural Children’s Book Day, an organization whose mission is to raise awareness for books that celebrate diversity and get more of those books into classrooms and libraries. She is also the co-founder of Aquent, once a Harvard student startup that has turned into the largest global marketing and creative recruiting firm in the U.S.

During our conversation, she mentioned a story of her daughter, who couldn’t name a single Asian-American female athlete when prompted. This became Mia’s motivation to showcase many diverse role models, such as young, female, Asian-American athletes. Through books, she could demonstrate that all types of dreams are possible.

I was very excited to approach Mia to learn more about her plans, because our Make Noise Today initiative precisely aligns to this common objective to empower youth to champion racial equality by amplifying Asian-American stories. We can take control of our own narrative and promote racial equity by telling personal stories of our heritage and accomplishments, challenges, grit, inspiration, and culture.

Full article of the interview HERE