Who We are
MYA FISHER
Founder and Chief Executive and Transformation Officer (CETO)
Global Equity Forward
Mya is the Chief Executive and Transformation Officer for Global Equity Forward. She brings a wealth of experience in the areas of equity, inclusion, and education from an international perspective to her executive role. As a woman of color who has greatly benefited from international experiences and opportunities, Mya’s 20-year career illustrates a passion and commitment to equity and inclusion, particularly as a leader in international program management, exchange, and cross-cultural training for U.S.-Japan relations. She is also an enthusiastic supporter of next-generation talent. Encouraging young people to embrace their leadership potential, pursue interests in international opportunities, and discover their place and purpose in the world motivates and inspires her every day.
Mya’s divides her work at Global Equity Forward into two distinct areas. As a strategic consultant, she advises corporate and non-profit entities on why approaching their ventures through a lens of equity matters and empowers them to implement action plans that facilitate meaningful and sustained change. She partners with entities to not only develop solutions to today’s problems but equips them to meet the inevitable challenges of the future. Mya’s vision of what the world can be and how entities can do better and be more equitable in their practices, messaging and impact is informed by her international experiences and faith in the power of people-to-people connections. In this unique moment of change and reckoning, Mya also collaborates with organizations in bringing equal access to opportunities and benefits to an increasingly diverse workforce. She regularly speaks and leads trainings focused on understanding race and systemic racism in global contexts.
The other area of Mya’s work is explicitly in the arena of education and teaching. In response to the coronavirus pandemic and the reckoning for racial justice in the U.S., in the summer of 2020 Mya returned to her sociology roots and launched the blog – Global Education Diversity Dialogues. It is a platform for engaging on topics related to international education, diversity, and race. She wrote a series of posts on Racial Justice in the U.S.-Japan community, that reflected on her personal experience, but also explored the ways the community needs to recognize its diversity and prepare for the future of the relationship that will look and be different than the last 70 years.
Photo by Capturing Perfection Photography
This project integrates her expertise in international exchange and higher education, training as a sociologist, and passion for teaching. In addition to the blog, she teaches virtual courses, most recently – How Race and Ethnicity Shape American Life, to American and Japanese audiences. Mya’s work creates spaces for people to ask hard questions, find their “voice” to engage in these conversations and equips them to be active and critical thinkers who will contribute to the reimagining of societies grounded in principles of equity and inclusion.
Mya is a proud alum of Williams College (B.A. Psychology and Sociology), New York University (M.A., International Education) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.S. and PhD, Sociology). In her free time, she enjoys watching movies on opening night (pre-coronavirus), spoiling her two pet guinea pigs, listening to audiobooks, traveling, practicing yoga and doing Zumba.