Mia Malan is the founding editor-in-chief of the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism, a leading, donor-funded media start-up in South Africa. Bhekisisa has pioneered solutions journalism in the country and its reporting has influenced several major health and social justice policies.
Mia has 25 years of journalism and institution-building experience in legacy media and digital native publications, working in newsrooms and at media development organisations in Johannesburg, Nairobi and Washington, DC. She’s grown Bhekisisa from a specialist desk at a legacy outlet to an independent non-profit over the past seven years.
A respected long-form writer and broadcaster, Mia has worked with journalists, media trainers and news executives from countries including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Botswana, Uganda, Ethiopia, India, Thailand, Iran and the Czech Republic.
She’s a former Knight International Journalism fellow of the International Center for Journalists and a Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism fellow at Oxford University. Mia has won 26 local and international awards for her radio, print and television work and serves on the council of the South African National Editors Forum.
