Welcome to Fabulous Female Founders!
I see you. I get you.
We fabulous female founders are lawyers, doctors, planners, landscape architects, accountants, writers, PR experts, engineers, daycare providers, influencers, healthcare professionals, salespeople, brokers, designers, artists, social workers, you name it.
With or without partners or staff, we’ve dreamed and schemed and taken the brave leap to create and lead a business or organization.
We’re crazy busy. We’re juggling family, self-care, community care, and the never-ending needs of our businesses. We’re often lonely. We are career-loving Moms, wives, sisters, daughters, and friends. We are trying to figure out how to grow, manage, balance, navigate, learn, stay motivated, or exit.
Whether we bootstrap with our own funds and keep it small and steady or take in venture capital, grow like mad and get acquired, we need all the support we can get!
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About me
I am an Executive Coach, business advisor, social entrepreneur, serial founder, investor, mentor, community builder, Mom of three, tennis nut, voracious reader, and haphazard gardener. I am many things to many people, a curious chameleon: adaptable, creative, bursting with joy, optimism, and gratitude.
For close to three decades, I ferociously created and led the field of active transportation: human-powered mobility, such as biking, walking, or rolling. The first four years of my career were at an international non-profit think tank, followed by six years at the City of Portland as their Bicycle Program Coordinator and 17 years as the co-founder of Alta Planning + Design (a consulting firm creating active communities) and Alta Bicycle Share, Inc. (an operations firm that launched and operated public bike share systems.)
I co-created a professional networking organization, academic program, and national coalition of cities, plus led a movement to overhaul the nation’s bikeway design guidelines. I am the author of Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet, (The Mountaineers, 2012), which tells the story of how a group of determined visionaries transformed Portland, OR into a cycling mecca and inspired the nation. I have taught as a guest and adjunct professor, given hundreds of speeches, and earned several MBA’s worth of experience.
Good stuff, right? A very cool career, indeed! But if you ask me what I’m most proud of, it’s my three amazing kids. Skyler, age 27, lives in Brooklyn, and is a sales leader for a software support company. Sasha, age 24, lives in Portland, where she works as an ABA therapist at a clinic for autistic children.
Little Levi, my bonus baby, is 14. I had Levi when I was 45 years old, after my doctor had told me I couldn’t get pregnant and while in the throes of leading both companies, one of which navigated a series of intense, very public challenges including a software debacle, hurricane, supplier bankruptcy, and union drive.
In 2014, my business partners and I sold Alta Bicycle Share to a group of New York investors. A year later, depleted, I exited Alta Planning + Design.
For the past decade, I’ve been coaching, advising, and investing in female-led companies. I started a community organization, Eastside Jewish Commons, and volunteer and serve on non-profit and corporate boards.
My parents were born and raised in Montreal. The eldest of four, I was born in New Jersey, spent my formative years in Dallas, TX, went to college at the University of Texas in Austin and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna Italy and Washington, D.C., and have lived in Portland, OR for more than 30 years. I am blessed to have a big, complex, beautiful blended family, including ten siblings/stepsiblings.
More about me at miabirk.com.
My Coaching Services
I LOVE coaching founders like YOU.
I want to help more of you grow your businesses, make choices, overcome challenges, grow confidence, and find satisfaction, joy, pride, prosperity, and peace. I love helping you solve problems and challenges. I love seeing your growth and success. I love how a story, anecdote, connection, or resource can be all you need to overcome whatever it is you’re facing. I love how you’re simultaneously juggling family, community, and personal health. I’m intensely curious and endlessly entertained by the entrepreneurial experience.
I would be honored and grateful to be part of your journey.
