About Amanda
Amanda Hirsch is passionate about changing the stories we tell in order to change the world. The former editorial director of PBS.org and a speaker at SXSW and Harvard’s Kennedy School,she is the founder and CEO of Mighty Forces, a storytelling company that helps change-makers tell true and strategic stories to increase their impact and joy. Learn more.
With a background in improv comedy, the art of improv infuses Amanda’s approach to life and work. She is the author of two books, Improvising Adulthood: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me and Feeling My Way: Finding Motherhood Without Losing Myself, and her script, "Yes, Andrea," was a finalist in the Sundance Institute's Episodic Lab.
She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley.
See also:
Taurus
INFJ (with strong extroverted leanings)
Human Design: Projector
Enneagram: 8
In this video, you can see me performing at Ignite DC way back in the early aughts. I pretended to be very nervous (I was not). I like to think of it as my Andy Kaufman moment.
When Amanda was little, she dreamed of being an actress when she grew up.
She was a drama club kid. She fell in love with her husband, Jordan, during a high school production of Guys & Dolls (he was Sky Masterson, she was the student director — scandalous!). Her senior year, she was voted “Most Congenial” and “Most Likely to Host a Talk Show” (go Rockets!).
In her 20s she discovered improv and performed with her group, JINX, at Washington Improv Theater and in festivals around the country. The art of improv changed her life, which is why she wrote Improvising Adulthood.