Mia is a born environmentalist, and has been creating social change through activism and the markets since she was young (boycotting companies and old-fashioned letter writing was a regular occurrence starting in 4th grade). She focused her undergraduate and graduate degrees on environmental justice, public/private partnerships to clean up polluted sites, and corporate responsibility. This was a time when there were few brands to look up to (namely Ben & Jerry’s, Seventh Generation and Patagonia) and a major lack of transparency in almost every product type--skin care, food and drinks, household goods, furniture, apparel and more.
After grad school, Mia began working on market-based campaigns as the Organizing Director for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, where she pushed large companies using toxic chemicals to reformulate, and working to champion the nascent organic and natural product category. She was also a co-leader of the national Workgroup for Safe Markets, a project of Coming Clean. Mia worked to improve the safety of plastics, leading the first market-based campaign to push companies to remove bisphenols (e.g. BPA) from consumer products like Nalgene water bottles, baby bottles and sippy cups and from the linings of canned foods.
Mia was the first hire at Beautycounter, a rapidly-growing skin care and beauty company dedicated to better beauty. She developed the company's stance on safety, including the industry-leading "Ingredient Selection Process," and led sustainability and social responsibility efforts for the brand. She also had the privilege of leading environmental health education for 30,000+ independent consultants selling Beautycounter, by extension bringing safety and sustainability concepts for hundreds of thousands of living rooms and social channels across the country.
Mia currently acts as the Director of Environmental & Social Responsibility at Credo Beauty, the largest clean beauty retailer (nine brick & mortar stores and at credobeauty.com). Mia created the Credo Clean Standard--retail's strongest "clean" policy--that all 120 brand partners must comply with. She leads Credo’s brand consortium, which addresses key challenges in this industry, from fragrance disclosure to packaging. She is developing new sustainability goals for Credo in 2020.
Mia has consulted for goop, Honest Company, type:A, ILIA, Bawdy Beauty, Sundaily, Merryfield (coming soon!), and more. Mia advised Follain on its standards early in the company's growth, and Environmental Working Group when they created their "EWG Verified" certification for clean skin care products.
She's a confident, compelling communicator and moving public speaker, capable of delivering complex information to diverse audiences.