Miemie Winn Byrd

== Early life and education ==

== Early life and education ==

Miemie Winn Byrd was born in Thonze, Burma ([[Myanmar]]), and emigrated to the United States with her parents as a teenager. She attended Nicholas Junior High School and Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California. Dr. Byrd earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Economics and Accounting from [[Claremont McKenna College]] and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with an emphasis on Asia-Pacific Economics and Business from the [[University of Hawaii]]. She later obtained a Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.) in Leadership from the [[University of Southern California]].{{cite news |title=မြန်မာနွယ်ဖွား အမေရိကန်အမျိုးသမီး ဒုဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး မီမီဝင်းဘတ် |url=https://burmese.voanews.com/a/women-program/3541976.html |work=VOA |date=9 May 2017 |language=my}}

Miemie Winn Byrd was born in Thonze, Burma ([[Myanmar]]), and emigrated to the United States with her parents as a teenager. She attended Nicholas Junior High School and [[Sunny Hills High School]] in Fullerton, California. Dr. Byrd earned a [[Bachelor of Arts]] (B.A.) in Economics and Accounting from [[Claremont McKenna College]] and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with an emphasis on Asia-Pacific Economics and Business from the [[University of Hawaii]]. She later obtained a Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.) in Leadership from the [[University of Southern California]].{{cite news |title=မြန်မာနွယ်ဖွား အမေရိကန်အမျိုးသမီး ဒုဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး မီမီဝင်းဘတ် |url=https://burmese.voanews.com/a/women-program/3541976.html |work=VOA |date=9 May 2017 |language=my}}

== Military career ==

== Military career ==

She also served as the editor for USPACOM's Asia-Pacific Economic Update publications from 2003 to 2007. She spearheaded the establishment and launch of the Suu Foundation, a 501(c)(3) U.S. non-profit entity, at the request of Nobel Peace Laureate Daw [[Aung San Suu Kyi]] in 2013. She also serves on the Board of Governors of the Keck Center for International and [[Strategic studies|Strategic Studies]] at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and as an Adjunct Fellow at the [[East-West Center]] in Honolulu, Hawaii. Additionally, she is on the Selection Committee for the USABCI Myanmar Scholarship Fund under the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council Institute based in Washington, D.C., and serves on several regional advisory committees, including the Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar Initiative of the Asia Regional Office, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Thanakha International Gender Network, and Myanmar Policy Institute (MPI).{{cite web |title=Myanmar Junta Enforces Conscription Law Amid Backlash, Exodus |url=https://www.voanews.com/a/myanmar-junta-enforces-conscription-law-amid-backlash-exodus/7494041.html |website=Voice of America |date=19 February 2024 |access-date=28 August 2024}}{{cite web |title=Burnings and beheadings: Myanmar junta escalates terror tactics against its people |url=https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/asia/myanmar-military-junta-civilian-attacks-intl-hnk-dst/index.html |website=CNN |date=28 March 2024 |access-date=28 August 2024}}{{cite web |title=Defections from Myanmar military slow as generals tighten grip |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/7/myanmar-military-defectors |website=Al Jazeera |access-date=28 August 2024}}

She also served as the editor for USPACOM's Asia-Pacific Economic Update publications from 2003 to 2007. She spearheaded the establishment and launch of the Suu Foundation, a 501(c)(3) U.S. non-profit entity, at the request of Nobel Peace Laureate Daw [[Aung San Suu Kyi]] in 2013. She also serves on the Board of Governors of the Keck Center for International and [[Strategic studies|Strategic Studies]] at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and as an Adjunct Fellow at the [[East-West Center]] in Honolulu, Hawaii. Additionally, she is on the Selection Committee for the USABCI Myanmar Scholarship Fund under the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council Institute based in Washington, D.C., and serves on several regional advisory committees, including the Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar Initiative of the Asia Regional Office, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Thanakha International Gender Network, and Myanmar Policy Institute (MPI).{{cite web |title=Myanmar Junta Enforces Conscription Law Amid Backlash, Exodus |url=https://www.voanews.com/a/myanmar-junta-enforces-conscription-law-amid-backlash-exodus/7494041.html |website=Voice of America |date=19 February 2024 |access-date=28 August 2024}}{{cite web |title=Burnings and beheadings: Myanmar junta escalates terror tactics against its people |url=https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/asia/myanmar-military-junta-civilian-attacks-intl-hnk-dst/index.html |website=CNN |date=28 March 2024 |access-date=28 August 2024}}{{cite web |title=Defections from Myanmar military slow as generals tighten grip |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/7/myanmar-military-defectors |website=Al Jazeera |access-date=28 August 2024}}

She has been a frequent commentator on Myanmar affairs, participating in interviews and panel discussions with international media outlets.{{Cite news |title=သြစတြေးလျက ဘက်ပြောင်းလာသူတွေကို တံခါးဖွင့်ပေးတဲ့ ပထမဆုံး နိုင်ငံဖြစ်လာပြီ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/opinion/interview/2022/04/06/251110.html |work=The Irrawaddy}} She advocated for the full integration of Burmese women into the military.{{Cite web |date=2018-01-13 |title=ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဖော်ဆောင်မှု အမျိုးသမီးတွေရဲ့ကဏ္ဍ ဗိုလ်မှူးမီမီဝင်းဘတ် အမြင် |url=https://burmese.voanews.com/a/women-program-dr-mie-mie-winn-byrd-the-role-of-women-in-myanmar-peace-process/4206050.html |access-date=2024-09-03 |website=ဗွီအိုအေ |language=my}} In the aftermath of the [[Pazigyi massacre]], she expressed deep sadness and condemned the tragic incident in which hundreds of civilians were killed in a military council airstrike during a public gathering, declaring it a war crime. She emphasized that it is crucial for all people to unite and participate in the revolution to completely eradicate the military dictatorship.{{cite news |title=စစ်အာဏာရှင်အမြစ်ဖြုတ်ရေး အားလုံးပါဝင်သင့်ပြီလို့ ဒေါက်တာမီမီဝင်းဘတ် ပြော |url=https://www.rfa.org/burmese/interview/interview-with-retired-lieutenant-colonel-of-us-army-04182023101337.html |work=RFA |language=my}} She is actively working to bring Myanmar's issues to the forefront in the U.S. Congress. On March 26, 2024, she met with U.S. Representative [[Paul Tonko]] in Albany, New York, to discuss matters related to increasing U.S. support and focus on the restoration of democracy in Myanmar.{{cite news |title=အမေရိကန်လွှတ်တော်အမတ်နှင့် ဒေါက်တာမီမီဝင်းဘတ်တို့ မြန်မာ့အရေး တွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေး |url=https://burmese.dvb.no/post/645470 |work=DVB |language=en}}

She has been a frequent commentator on Myanmar affairs, participating in interviews and panel discussions with international media outlets.{{Cite news |title=သြစတြေးလျက ဘက်ပြောင်းလာသူတွေကို တံခါးဖွင့်ပေးတဲ့ ပထမဆုံး နိုင်ငံဖြစ်လာပြီ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/opinion/interview/2022/04/06/251110.html |work=The Irrawaddy}} She advocated for the full integration of Burmese women into the military.{{Cite web |date=2018-01-13 |title=ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဖော်ဆောင်မှု အမျိုးသမီးတွေရဲ့ကဏ္ဍ ဗိုလ်မှူးမီမီဝင်းဘတ် အမြင် |url=https://burmese.voanews.com/a/women-program-dr-mie-mie-winn-byrd-the-role-of-women-in-myanmar-peace-process/4206050.html |access-date=2024-09-03 |website=ဗွီအိုအေ |language=my}} In the aftermath of the [[Pazigyi massacre]], she expressed deep sadness and condemned the tragic incident in which hundreds of civilians were killed in a military council airstrike during a public gathering, declaring it a war crime. She emphasized that it is crucial for all people to unite and participate in the revolution to completely eradicate the military dictatorship.{{cite news |title=စစ်အာဏာရှင်အမြစ်ဖြုတ်ရေး အားလုံးပါဝင်သင့်ပြီလို့ ဒေါက်တာမီမီဝင်းဘတ် ပြော |url=https://www.rfa.org/burmese/interview/interview-with-retired-lieutenant-colonel-of-us-army-04182023101337.html |work=RFA |language=my}} She is actively working to bring Myanmar's issues to the forefront in the U.S. Congress. On March 26, 2024, she met with U.S. Representative [[Paul Tonko]] in [[Albany, New York]], to discuss matters related to increasing U.S. support and focus on the restoration of democracy in Myanmar.{{cite news |title=အမေရိကန်လွှတ်တော်အမတ်နှင့် ဒေါက်တာမီမီဝင်းဘတ်တို့ မြန်မာ့အရေး တွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေး |url=https://burmese.dvb.no/post/645470 |work=DVB |language=en}}

==Personal life==

==Personal life==