Since childhood, Mia has always considered herself a storyteller and has been drawn to the power of stories to shape culture, history, and identity. Throughout her professional career, she has used teaching, research, and visual arts as vehicles for shifting dominant, exclusive narratives and myths surrounding Black girl- and womanhood, science, technology, and society. She has been a published comic artist and illustrator for almost two decades and has created comic art and graphic illustrations as media for transforming education research into more accessible, multimodal forms. 

As a science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) educator, she taught 8th grade physical science and worked as a program coordinator for the girls-centered STEM education nonprofit, Techbridge Girls. In 2023, she earned a PhD in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education from the Graduate School of Education at University of Pennsylvania. As a learning scientist, she designs, implements, and studies STEAM learning experiences that engage Black and Brown youth, particularly Black girls, in using interactive technologies to support identity authorship, creative expression and voice, and speculative literacy and design practices.