Mike Glad

About Me

Mike Glad was born in Pensacola, Florida. The son of an aviation naval officer, he grew up in cities throughout the United States and Europe. He attended Georgia Tech on a football scholarship, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering.

Mike Glad is a well-known supporter of the California tribal art scene, and over the years has acquired a collection of important artifacts from Indonesia, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. An avid art collector, Mike Glad has amassed one of the world’s most diverse animation art collections, which has been exhibited in museums throughout Europe and the United States.

Mike Glad has spent thirty-five years traveling in developing countries documenting the lives of indigenous people. He has contributed photos to several travel magazines and books, and in 2006 he won Costco’s International Photo Contest, which had received more than 30,000 entries. Over the years throughout Mexico and Central America, Mike Glad observed the changing traditions of indigenous cultures and wanted to tell their story. In 2000, Glad financed and produced The Spirit of the Maya, about the modern Maya culture. In 2002, with partner Leslie Iwerks, he embarked on Recycled Life, a documentary about the thousands of people that earn livelihoods picking through the trash in the Guatemala City garbage dump. This documentary placed first in more than a dozen film festivals and was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscar for Documentary Short Subject in 2007. Glad produced another film A Safe Passage, which help raise over $3 million for a nonprofit organization (Safe Passage) that helps children whose parents work in the Guatemala City dump.

At the turn of the new decade, Mike Glad left the business world to focus full time on photography. In 2010 he worked with Michael and Greg Hamson for the book Art of the Boiken. Additionally, he spent 3 months in Ethiopia photographing the people and the wildlife particularly the birds. In 2012, he has visited Guatemala five-time preparing for an exhibit “Faith and Celebration in Guatemala” that opened in March 2012 at the Museo Ixchel in Guatemala City