For the Cuban-Polish founder of TEDxDaltVila, her family&rsquo;s far-flung finca in the northeast of Ibiza has been the constant in a life spent traversing the globe.

&lsquo;My personal history is inextricably entwined with <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/people-of-ibiza/faye-browne-celebrity-hair-colourist-hair-stylist-people-of-ibiza" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ibiza</a>, given that I was conceived here on the island. My parents actually married each other twice, which is pretty wild. The first time they were very young, only 19, and when they got divorced my mom married somebody else for eight years. After more than a decade apart, she had a calling to reach out to my father again. He was living in Madrid but had just bought an <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/documenting-the-past-the-ibiza-finca-portfolio-of-sayana-cairo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">old finca</a> in Ibiza, near Aguas Blancas. My mom was living in Rio. My father had never stopped loving her and over the phone he said, &lsquo;just come home&rsquo;. Mom landed in Spain with Brazilian sand still in her jeans and right away she got pregnant. They remarried two weeks before I was born. My mother is Cuban and my father is Polish - both are American citizens but both were also refugees. My father was an executive but he never lost that refugee mentality, so we were always on the move &ndash; Madrid, Japan, Miami, Argentina, Italy. Later I went to boarding school in Switzerland. Throughout it all, the house in Ibiza was our constant. We&rsquo;d come back to Aguas Blancas for long, slow, sticky summers with the whole family. As soon as we arrived it was like a homecoming. The scent of the dry pine needles and the hot air and the deafening whirr of the cicadas in the forest. It was comfort. It was always home.&nbsp;

We&rsquo;d spend all summer here and it was very basic &ndash; we had electricity and hot water but no air conditioning and no TV. If we needed to make a phone call, we had to drive to <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/the-most-beautiful-hotels-for-autumn-in-ibiza" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Santa Eul&agrave;ria</a>. As a child I would read a lot and explore the caminos near our house. It was all very slow-paced and laid-back &ndash; we&rsquo;d wander to the beach, eat some bread and fruit, swim all day, and lie on the rocks. My parents&rsquo; friends were all very international and interesting. There were dinners, picnics, and always other kids to play with. Ibiza felt timeless, somehow. After school in Switzerland, I went to New York to study film at NYU. I always loved working in production, behind the scenes. Later I became a news and documentary producer in New York, then Washington DC, then moved to London with my husband and our children. We still spent every summer in Ibiza, though, and a time came when my husband and I decided it made sense to try living here full-time. That decision completely changed the trajectory of our lives&nbsp; - it brought our family unit so much closer. My parents still live in our original house so we bought a place just over the road. The first few years, as the island was in a pandemic-induced slumber, it felt as though I&rsquo;d returned to the Ibiza of my childhood. The pace was gentle, the roads were quiet and the <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/people-of-ibiza-bahramji" target="_blank" rel="noopener">community</a> felt united. It was during that time that I began to think about where I might focus my energies once the children were a little more independent. I&rsquo;d worked for a climate change non-profit in Miami and I&rsquo;d always felt drawn to that field of impactful education. When some friends suggested that I host intellectual dinners and invite interesting people, I remember thinking, &lsquo;Hmmmm, right, or I could do something like TED.&rsquo;

TEDxDaltVila has brought me back into the heart of a community whose ideas and values are deeply aligned with my own.

I started looking into it and very quickly realised the vastness of the application process and the fact that <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/expanding-perspectives-tedxdaltvila-surpasses-all-expectations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TEDxDaltVila</a> would have to be run solely by volunteers. Ibiza&rsquo;s not an easy place to live at the best of times, so to convince an entire team to dedicate their time and expertise for free was an immense undertaking. Plus, it was vital for me that the production was flawless. To produce an event of that scale in Ibiza &ndash; 18 speakers and four performers over eight hours &ndash; was a shock to the system. It totally uprooted me from normal life. Right after the event someone came up to me as I was leaving the theatre and said, &lsquo;Wow that was great! Thank you so much for bringing this to Ibiza! I can't wait for next year.&rsquo; Instead of being happy, I thought I might faint. But then the ripple effect began &ndash; two of our talks were chosen by TED for promotion and went viral. One speaker received a 50,000-euro donation to her charity from a Swiss foundation and others gained life-changing recognition for their work. The impact has been huge. My mission is now to keep the momentum, to finally get the TEDxIbiza licence and to continue to reframe the global perception of Ibiza. I was at a TED event in Atlanta a few months ago and - even among that educated circle - people were asking which nightclub we were holding the event in. It was humour, of course, but it shows just how far we have to go in reminding the world that Ibiza isn&rsquo;t all parties and beaches and late nights. There&rsquo;s an intellectual scene that&rsquo;s been simmering here since the 1950s and a radical local and global community whose power to speak and act and provoke real change should not be underestimated. TEDxDaltVila has brought me back into the heart of a community whose ideas and values are deeply aligned with my own. It&rsquo;s brought me back to the Ibiza I always knew.&rsquo;
Click <a href="https://tedxdaltvila.com/tickets/">here </a>to book tickets for TEDxDaltVila 2024, taking place on Saturday, March 23 2024 at&nbsp; Palacio de Congresos, Ibiza

People of Ibiza: Mia Kirn

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