WE TELL OUR STORIES. WE HEAL OUR HEARTS. WE INSPIRE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME.
Photo by Elijah Hasan
Dr. S. Renee Mitchell
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Creative Revolutionist™
Dr. Renee is the visionary founder and executive director of I Am M.O.R.E. (Making Ourselves Resilient Everyday) LLC. She obtained her Doctor of Education (2021) from the University of Oregon, in Educational Leadership. She is a longtime youth advocate, training facilitator, educator, creative writer, performer, multimedia artist, project manager and award-winning former newspaper journalist.
Dr. Renee is hard to define and even harder to match her energy. Her authentic effervescence will remind you of a unique combination of Oprah and Maya Angelou. Learn more on her personal website
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Download Renee's resume
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2019-20 Spirit of Portland Award
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"She’s not an unsung hero. She’s a hero who has been in plain sight in our community. But, because she’s so effective, she always reflects back the glory on others. And she never seeks the limelight. …. When you live in this community, you really deeply appreciate the people who make it a better place….(Renee) has brought such beauty and such joy and such depth to our community.”
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~ the late City Commissioner Nick Fish
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In this video, Renee talked about overcoming racism, developing resilience, and creating empowering art out of pain. Click here to listen in.
When life hands you a broken heart, use the fragments of your deepest pain to create beautiful art.
~ S. Renee Mitchell
After a successful, award-winning career as a newspaper journalist, Renee became the only Black teacher at Roosevelt, Oregon's most diverse high school, for several years. While there, she founded the award-winning, youth-empowerment and development initiative I Am M.O.R.E. Renee also organized Portland’s first Youth Poet Laureate competition. For several summers, she accompanied teenage poets to Washington, D.C. New York, San Francisco and other large urban cities so they could attend Brave New Voices, the world's largest youth poetry slam.
Renee received a doctorate degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Oregon and intends to create a national example of how to empower and build hope and resilience in youth of color with profound love, social-emotional skill building, and culturally centered youth participatory evaluation and programming.
Motivated by intention and heart, Renee’s deepest desire is to help others use their creativity to let go, gather up and move on in order to find their voice, sense of purpose and their place in the world.
Here is where you can find more videos of Renee's creative and community work:
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