Miya Cain, MPP, is an Associate Director at FSG with more than a decade of experience helping foundations sharpen strategy and build the cross‑sector coalitions required for lasting change. Her work sits at the intersection of health equity, community organizing, and field building, and she partners with national and place‑based funders including the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Interact for Health, and the BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation.
Miya helped develop and launch HEY! Greater Cincinnati, a collective impact initiative engaging 200+ leaders from over 115 youth-serving organizations, 25 youth fellows, and 13 funders to address youth mental health across 12 counties. She partnered with UCSF and the San Francisco Department of Public Health to develop the Expecting Justice initiative, supporting Black and Pacific Islander mothers as leaders in eliminating racial disparities in birth outcomes. She also helped build the Teton Behavioral Health Alliance, a cross-sector behavioral health strategy co-funded by multiple foundations across the mountain west.
Beyond her client work, Miya trains hundreds of community leaders nationwide—from youth to educators to elected officials—through the Leading Change Network, and has taught Public Narrative at Harvard Kennedy School under Professor Marshall Ganz. She serves on the board of HEAL Trafficking and is a 2026 recipient of the Boston Congress of Public Health 40 Under 40 Public Health Catalyst Award. Her publications include FSG’s Being the Change and Healthy Birth Outcomes through Cross-Sector Collaboration.
Before FSG
Before joining FSG, Miya served as a political appointee in the Obama Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Office of the Vice President, and as a first-class Global Health Corps fellow with Partners in Health in rural Rwanda.
Education
- Bachelor of Arts in Psychology-Behavioral Neuroscience, Yale University
- Master in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Affiliation
- Global Health Corps Fellow
- New Leaders Council Fellow
- Humanity in Action Diplomacy and Diversity Fellow
- Ron Brown Scholars
Languages
- Spanish
- French (beginner)
- Kinyarwanda (beginner)
On Working At FSG
I am inspired by the chance to work with my colleagues and our partners on creative and effective approaches to social change. Working at FSG has helped me develop new tools for advancing equity and I appreciate that everyone here has the humility not to believe we have all the answers. We are constantly asking ourselves which voices are represented and who is not at the table, how can we leverage our resources to support local capacity building, and how can we encourage clients to do the same.
