Lia Holland

Lia Holland (they/she) is a social artist, writer, and activist in the Pacific Northwestern US. After 13 years of organizing in the music industry, Lia now focuses on copyleft, web3, and surveillance issues at national digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future while keeping up a rigorous speculative fiction habit. Lia currently serves as the Campaigns & Communications Director for Fight for the Future, the viral digital rights nonprofit behind the largest online protests in history. In campaigns, Lia focuses on emerging open source and decentralized technologies, as well as copyleft organizing underpinned by the philosophy that artists and creators need to eat even as they work to make existing creative monopolies, Big Tech giants, and other discriminatory gatekeeping institutions obsolete. From age fifteen onward, Lia worked and volunteered independently with an array of events while participating in ecodefense, anti-war, and LGBTQ+ organizing. This work culminated in the passion project of founding Electric Forest’s Plug In Program—a first-of-its-kind fan engagement platform with the intent to cultivate staying power in what has grown to be one of the largest and most celebrated music festivals in North America. In 2014 Lia transitioned to a full-time role with AEG’s Madison House Presents. At a corporate level, the title of Community Engagement Manager was created for Lia. Achievements at Madison House Presents include a Group Hug World Record attempt with over 8,000 participants and the #EF2016Reveal, which delivered physical letters that announced lineup artists in a 12-hour frenzy that was celebrated by marketing specialists and adopted by Radiohead to announce their tour that summer. After 13 years of organizing, brand and artist management, and event production, Lia is proud to have incited a sense of belonging and inspiration in hundreds of thousands of people by pairing activism and social good with music. The success of this work helped them discover and move into their greatest loves from the music space full time: writing and human rights organizing. Growing up in the Cascade foothills, Lia gained a lifelong love for the Pacific Northwest and that’s where Lia refined their focus into the nonprofit and advocacy space while expanding as an artist in their own right. As a member of the LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse communities, Lia is particularly jazzed to be crafting speculative novels and short stories just like they wanted to as a kid, working with an intimate critique group of published authors that would make any child-self proud. Lia alternates days at the laptop with adventures to the forests, mountains, and beaches they’ll never get enough of. They can make a pretty deadly huckleberry pie, too. Lia’s friends and collaborators are as multifaceted as their experience, ranging from Amnesty International to The Oregon Country Fair, High Sierra Music Festival, and Summer Meltdown Festival. Queens, NY’s Forest Hills Stadium, NPR’s StoryCorps, VICE, Burners Without Borders, To Write Love On Her Arms, HeadCount, DanceSafe, The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Thievery Corporation, and CreativeMornings Portland—to name a few. Dozens of major news publications have covered Lia’s work. Lia’s talent, curiosity, and fearless attitude fuel their craving for fresh challenges that improve our world. In every project, they draw inspiration from the great, diverse creators of our time—especially those that challenge convention. Lia seeks projects, friends, and collaborators who are similar drawn to being different.