Dr. S. Renee Mitchell

Dr. S. Renee Mitchell, educator, entrepreneur, and Pulitzer Prize-nominated former newspaper journalist, is the visionary founder of a nationally award-winning and transformative, leadership-development initiative for Black youth, called I Am M.O.R.E. (Making Ourselves Resilient Everyday). This effort is intended as an upstream prescription to the low achievement and low self-esteem of Black students internally suffering from being spirit-murdered in classrooms, society and within families. Dr. Mitchell spent 25 years as a newspaper journalist in Portland, Orlando, and Detroit, among other cities, and is best described as a Creative Revolutionist, who expresses herself through poetry, storytelling, teaching and creating multimedia experiences. Her intergenerational “Spreading the Black Joy Virus” campaign, for example, helps Black people tap into their ancestral joy and resiliency.