Mariah Rose McKay
by Jennifer LaRue
Y O U ’ V E P R O B A B LY seen Mariah Rose McKay around town riding her bike—even in snow and ice courtesy of studded tires— promoting healthy living and alternative transportation. When she’s not at her day job at the Spokane Regional Health District, she is actively connecting with her community through outreach and organizing in hopes of a better world. McKay was raised in Spokane. She moved to Portland to attend Reed College where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, but she had a change of heart.
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“I felt that the pressing social and political problems in the world were more urgent to address than negotiating the patent rights on the next first world disease drug,” she says. And so, upon returning to Spokane, she started organizing and doing what she could to help create a community she could be proud of. Her first act of community organizing was founding the Shrinking Violet Society which recently merged with the Spokane Area Chapter of the National Organization for Women
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