Mia Chen is a behavioral psychologist turned writer based in Oakland, California. She trained at UC Berkeley and spent four years in private clinical practice working with young professionals navigating identity crises and career transitions. She left therapeutic practice to write about behavioral patterns for a wider audience, finding that the patterns she observed in one-on-one sessions were playing out at a cultural scale in how people relate to food, health, and self-image.

At VegOut, Mia writes about food psychology, behavioral decision-making, and the hidden patterns shaping plant-based eating. She has a gift for making psychology research accessible without being reductive, and her writing often explores why people eat the way they do rather than prescribing what they should eat. Growing up as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who ran a restaurant for over two decades, she brings a personal understanding of food as both culture and identity.

Mia shares her Oakland home with two rescue cats named Soy and Almond. She reads research papers for pleasure, works best in the early morning hours, and believes that understanding your own behavior is the most practical skill you can develop.