Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, EdD is a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist who moves between realms of oral history, art, media, and civic engagement to produce meaningful, forward-facing cultural projects that creatively weave together folk narratives, popular culture, music, food, and art.
Tho-Biaz is a 2023–2024 Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Huntington Library working with Octavia Butler’s archives and a 2023 Fulbright Specialist Awardee in Ecuador, where she researches and designs new curriculum for the nationally mandated arts-based higher education university.
Previously, Tho-Biaz curated and hosted Unfinished Network’s 2022 inaugural salon on the theme of multiracial democracy with CNN’s Van Jones and MSNBC’s Maria Teresa Kumar; designed and led the Gloria Steinem Initiative’s public policy digital storytelling pilot; served as a New Mexico Humanities Council Scholar; and has held various academic and scholarly appointments at Columbia University, New York University, and the Banff Centre in Canada.
One of Tho-Biaz’s greatest joys is connecting to audiences through her visionary, story-rich talks at a range of institutions, from Carnegie Hall to the Institute of American Indian Arts to SXSW. Making history contemporary, personal, and futures-dependent, she surfaces the stories that need to be heard.