As we wrote to y’all last year, ioby began as a hyperlocal organization with a mission to support neighborhood leaders and residents making positive change happen where they live. Since our founding in 2009, we’ve become a national organization (meaning that anyone in the U.S. can use our platform and services), but we’ve also been expanding our network of local offices around the country. We’ve always done this intentionally, by going to cities we’ve determined are especially likely to use and benefit from ioby’s platform and services for citizen-led change.
In 2013, we began working in Memphis, and earlier this year we opened our doors in Cleveland and Detroit. Now, we couldn’t be happier to introduce our newest office and newest team member: Action Strategist Miriam Parson of Pittsburgh!
“My family were farmers in central Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh is my home,” Miriam says. “I’ll never leave.”
Since 2009, Miriam has collaborated across Pittsburgh’s sustainability and revitalization communities to support many of the city’s environmental and community development solutions.
“Pittsburgh is a very open, collaborative city where people are committed to their neighborhoods’ wellbeing and pool their resources,” she says. “There’s a deep-rooted and collective sense here of our place in history, and we have a diverse, neighborhood-led investment in our home and its future.”
A first-generation college graduate who grew up in systemically under-resourced communities, Miriam is personally dedicated to building equitable collaborations that support neighbors determining the future of their own communities. For the last nine years she has served community initiatives in central PA and Pittsburgh.
“My thinking about problems has grown to be very action-oriented,” she says, “and I’ve learned that, as activist Lilla Watson said, ‘your liberation is bound up with mine,’ so we have to work together.”
Miriam says there are lots of organizations out there doing good work, but she’s especially excited by ioby’s “democracy on the ground” approach. “It’s civic engagement, it’s citizen philanthropy, it’s active self-determination,” she says. “It’s, ‘How do we pitch in some money, some time, and make this happen?’ That’s what we should all be doing as citizens anyway. ioby listens and provides support for Pittsburghers to build the future they want to see in their neighborhood.”