Drs. Mireille Liong-A-Kong;
IT Professional, Author and Social Entrepreneur
Drs. Mireille Liong-A-Kong was not only the first Surinamese with a commercial website, but also the first entrepreneur in the Netherlands to debut with a book about frizzy hair and a website dedicated to hair care and hairstyles. Although she studied Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam and has more than 50 websites to her name, Liong-A-Kong is better known as the pioneer of the digital frizzy hair industry, both in Suriname, the Netherlands and the United States.
Overcoming relaxer-induced alopecia, hair loss caused by the use of relaxers, was what inspired Liong to dedicate her IT experience to improving the hair and scalp condition of Black women worldwide. The fact that a whopping 73% of Black women suffer from this form of hair loss, motivated the Social Entrepreneur to shed light on the social injustice behind these numbers.
With the aim of positively changing the perception of nappy hair, Liong wrote the Amazon bestseller Going Natural, How to Fall in Love with Nappy Hair and created Going-Natural.com , the oldest online social network for nappy hair that has now grown into a portal with a following of over 80,000 members, fans and followers.
To promote the beauty of kinky hair, Liong started America's Next Natural Model , the first-ever online beauty pageant for kinky hair, in 2008, which successfully produced models for five years.
To literally create a different image of curly hair, the Surinamese who grew up in Wageningen produced “ Bad Hair Uprooted ”, an exhibition that has only increased her international fame.
A pioneer who was at the beginning of the online natural hair movement, Liong followed up with “ The Going Natural Video Diaries ”, a documentary that highlights the growing natural hair movement.
To support women with hair care, Liong has specially developed the Going Natural hair care line, based on and with an understanding of all types of frizzy hair.
Besides being interviewed as an entrepreneur by WABC TV in New York for the program Here and Now , Liong has also been awarded several times. In 2005 she received the MGB Global Watch Community Outreach Award from Ambassador Loemban Tobin and in 2014 from the Sankofa Community Empowerment in Brooklyn, the Kuumba Award.
Liong's latest project is WhatNaturalsLove.com , a digital marketplace for Black Hair care that aims to expand the market for entrepreneurs in the kinky hair industry while making natural kinky hair products accessible to the rest of the world.