On the day that Dionna Griffin-Irons received the best news of her life -- that she had been accepted into the Second City improv troupe -- she also received the worst news of her life: she was being arrested for unwittingly trafficking drugs for her then-boyfriend. After being convicted and sent to prison, Dionna found that introducing the seemingly unrelated world of improv into her prison experience allowed her to tap into her true self, be in the present, and overcome life's biggest obstacles.
Dionna Griffin-Irons is a writer, an alumna of The Second City Detroit, and the current Director of Outreach & Diversity at the legendary comedy theatre, The Second City.
She is a champion of empowering students, actors, women, inmates, and professionals to own their “voice” and give themselves permission to play and be heard wherever they are. In her current role, she mentors, cultivates and produces new voices in comedy and improv.
For 15+ years, she has used her stage experience and life lessons from a women’s minimum prison camp as the catalyst for her diversity and inclusion work. As one inmate reminded her, "We're all the same, only different."
She has taught 200+ workshops at colleges (including the University of Chicago Law School), women’s shelters, South Side Chicago public schools, and corporate boardrooms, and worked with the United States Embassy to introduce improv workshops in Norway and Latvia as a tool for social change.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx