Cierra Hinton

Executive Director-Publisher, Scalawag

Twitter: @iolabhinton
Cierra Hinton excels in her zone of genius as a member at Blue Engine Collaborative, a network of independent consultants and advisors to media organizations around the world. Cierra is a creative strategist; she centers imagination, play, and community in her work. She loves to build with teams and individuals as they drive toward outcomes that matter in a way that is inclusive and authentic. She’s thrilled to currently do that as a coach with the Facebook Sustainability Accelerator and UNC-Knight Table Stakes programs.
In addition to coaching and consulting, Cierra is the Executive Director-Publisher at Scalawag.

Before Scalawag, Cierra was an individual giving officer at a number of education non-profits including Teach For America where she was celebrated as the top fundraiser for their national alumni campaign. Fundraising is yet another manifestation of Cierra’s life purpose: it is her personal mission to find, gather, and distribute resources to folks that share her identities and have been historically disinherited, namely Black, Indigenous, queer, women and femme identifying people, and folks from rural and low-income communities. Cierra’s work as a community organizer previously with Ignite NC and now with the Southern Movement Assembly grounds that work.

Cierra has also served as the Director of Network Building and Operations at Press On, a Southern media collective and was a fellow at the Poynter Institute through the Media Transformation Challenge. She sits on the boards of LION Publishers and the NC Local News Workshop. Cierra calls North Carolina home. She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and now gleefully lives in Durham with her life partner, J, and domestic partner, Amber.