084: Miranda Perez of HBCU Founders Initiative

Boston Speaks Up

Miranda Perez is a cross-topic multimedia journalist on a mission to highlight and elevate marginalized voices. Evolving beyond the newsroom, she recently joined the team at HBCU Founders Initiative, a nonprofit organization that is engaging rising HBCU students and alumni interested in pursuing entrepreneurship. For those unfamiliar with the term HBCU, it refers to any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans. Perez is playing a critical role supporting entrepreneurs participating in HBCU Founder Initiative’s Pre-Accelerator, an 8-week program for early-stage founders who are past the ideation stage and ready to validate a problem and build a minimum viable product. Beyond her role at HBCUFI, Perez still writes about business, tech, politics, social issues, fashion, and entertainment, among other topics. She also consults with businesses navigating societal and technological change. She grew up as an inner-city kid in Chicago. She describes school “as an escape for a lot of the hardships I faced growing up.” She pushed herself academically and became the first person in her family to graduate from college, earning a Mass Media Arts degree from Clark Atlanta University, a top 25 nationally ranked HBCU and Black Ivy League school. During college, Miranda served as the Editor-In-Chief of CAU's campus newspaper, The Panther, and as the President/Editor-In-Chief of CAU's online magazine, Her Campus. During that time, Miranda had her first national byline in The Nation as a sophomore in college. These accomplishments won the attention of editors across the country, and Perez earned and held editor/reporter roles at BostInno, Insider and BuiltIn upon graduation. She’s also appeared on programs such as MSNBC discussing education equity for Hispanic Americans. In this episode, we speak with Perez about the challenges she’s overcome in life, and her evolution from a cross-topic multimedia journalist into a dynamic branding and storytelling consultant.