It was in high school when Myia Batie became aware of how fortunate she has been. With the opportunity to help do some graduate-level research at the University of Iowa, focusing on housing and homelessness, she began to uncover how poverty, race, and housing discrimination shape communities.
The experience led to an interest in urban planning and helped her realize that her parents’ move to Iowa three hours from Chicago, where they were raised, was to provide a better life for her and her siblings with better schools and high-quality neighborhoods.
“I recognized that my parents had found an exit for me,” says Batie. “And I knew that my life’s work would focus on helping others find their exit and using housing as a platform to do that.”
Her first internship was at the Iowa City Housing Authority in the city where she grew up, and that was the start to her career in the affordable housing industry. She later served as an intern and a fellow at the Virginia Housing Development Authority and then worked at the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, where she helped to rewrite the qualified allocation plan.
For the past two years, she has been coordinator of policy and programs at the Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, where she gets to do a little bit of everything, from developing and executing goals for OCCH’s philanthropic program that helps to send children to summer camps, provides scholarships for adults, and supports aging in place for seniors, to working with impact investors and doing policy work at the state level.
“Housing is foundational, and I have been fortunate to be a part of so many initiatives that not only advances that mission but extends it through philanthropy and other important activities to help improve opportunities for other people,” she says.
Outside of work, Batie, 32, serves on the board of managers for the Ohio Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for policies for low-income Ohioans, and on the board of the Columbus Landmarks Foundation, a group that advocates for historic architecture in the Buckeye State’s capital. She also enjoys spending as much as time as she can with family and friends.
