Miia Suokonautio

Executive Director at YWCA Halifax

Speaker

Miia Suokonautio has served as the Executive Director of YWCA Halifax, Atlantic Canada’s largest multiservice gender justice organization, since 2014. Presently, Miia is the Co-Chair of the Provincial Advisory Committee on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth, a member of the federal Reaching Home Community Advisory Board for Halifax, and regularly part of national advocacy initiatives with YWCA Canada. In the past, Miia has chaired the Homelessness Working Group of the Halifax Housing and Homelessness Partnership, co-chaired the Nova Scotia Sexual Assault Services Network, was a founding advisory member of the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing, a member of the Coalition for People Sleeping Outside, and served as a member of the Non-profit Childcare Directors’ Association of Nova Scotia. Miia has a graduate degree in social work from the University of Toronto and has pursued studies at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy in Paris, France. In Halifax, Miia has served as crisis worker in the IWK emergency department and taught in the School of Social Work at Dalhousie University. Miia is a lover of all that is messy, complicated, and unpredictable.