New Youth Fund Honors Mimi Tynes’s Leadership Legacy
Emily “Mimi” Tynes (LB ’84), who died in 2024, is survived by more than 1,400 children — a daughter, two sons, plus all the student participants in Youth Leadership Birmingham (YLB) across its 40-year history. As a YLB cofounder, she poured her love for teaching and learning, her faith in the community, and her hopes for the future into the program, causing her to have a hand in raising multiple generations of curious, compassionate, confident young leaders.
Now YLB is launching the Mimi Tynes Youth Leadership Fund to honor her innovative leadership and her legacy. YLB traditionally has welcomed student participants at no cost to them or their families — a commitment that has become more challenging as the cost of implementing a high-quality youth program has risen since its 1986 beginnings. The new fund “will sustain Mimi’s vision of a tuition-free program to diminish the socioeconomic divide in each class and to demonstrate our community’s investment in the future of local young leaders,” says Katherine Berdy, YLB’s director.
Family and friends have described Tynes as caring, a good listener, gregarious, genuine, and full of infectious enthusiasm. She parlayed those traits into a passion for leadership aimed at improving the Birmingham region. In 1993 she joined the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham (CFGB) as its first program officer. Five years later she was named executive director, and under her watch the CFGB ranked in the top 100 in asset size, and in the top 50 in grants awarded, among 500 community foundations nationwide. Tynes continued to support the CFGB following her retirement in 2000, including a planned gift for the Community Fund to benefit nonprofits.
“When Mimi passed away, the CFGB board approved a $10,000 grant to an eligible organization chosen by Mimi’s family to honor her life and service,” says Christopher Nanni (LB ’15), CFGB president and CEO. “With her strong legacy of leadership . . . it is no surprise that Mimi’s family chose to make that grant to YLB, an organization that brings together our area’s best and brightest youth to explore important issues and help develop our community’s next generation of lleaders. We’re pleased that the CFGB was able to honor her life and work in this way, and that her impact on Birmingham will continue in perpetuity.”
The CFGB gift, matched by an allocation from Leadership Birmingham, forms the heart of the Mimi Tynes Youth Leadership Fund. Berdy says the goal is to grow the fund through additional contributions from YLB and Leadership Birmingham alumni and other community members so that it not only sustains the youth program but also expands student opportunities. With enough support, YLB may eventually be able to “provide college scholarships to one or more deserving class members,” Berdy says.
Contributions to YLB yield immediate dividends because the students are eager to make a difference in the community today, Berdy notes. “In an increasingly siloed world, we believe investment in authentic, in-person, and community-centered relationships is vital to our individual growth and collective progress,” she says. “YLB selects the brightest students throughout Jefferson County, helps them learn about each other, and connects them with important issues, leaders, businesses, and mentors in our region. They learn about our region through carefully crafted program days that build knowledge, skills, and confidence.”
Every student who graduates from YLB carries a legacy from Tynes, who “used what she learned to address problems that impacted the people and communities around her,” Berdy says. The Mimi Tynes Youth Leadership Fund will ensure that legacy — her wholehearted dedication to community engagement, relationship building, and solving problems together — will forever flourish and grow.
YLB invites you to contribute to the Mimi Tynes Youth Leadership Fund at https://leadershipbirmingham.org/support-youth-leadership-birmingham/
This article was originally posted in the Leadership Birmingham Summer 2025 magazine. See the full magazine here.