Michael Byrd is the founder of Bridge America and This American Mosaic, two interlinked projects built around a single conviction:

America cannot repair its economic divides without understanding its people—and it cannot heal its cultural wounds without restoring ownership.

Michael’s work focuses on communities that helped build the country but were later shut out of its wealth-building systems—often for generations. His approach pairs compounding capital with cultural recognition, treating economic access and cultural legitimacy as inseparable.

Through Bridge America, Michael is working to ensure the promise of the new Invest America | Trump Accounts actually reaches the people and places where capitalism historically failed to take root. The work begins in Appalachia, Lakota territories, the Mississippi Delta, and South Texas—regions where land, credit, infrastructure, or trust was stripped away, and compounding never had a chance to begin.

Bridge America does not create new financial products.
It makes the best one work.

The organization partners with local leaders and institutions to anchor capital to culture—through heritage days, festivals, and annual ground stomps, where communities publicly see how much wealth they are building together. This cultural adoption is the missing infrastructure that turns accounts into participation, and participation into compounding.

This American Mosaic provides the storytelling and historical lens behind that work. Rather than viewing the country through political parties or abstract demographics, Michael explores America as a mosaic of distinct peoples—each with their own migration story, economic experience, and political instincts that continue to shape how they vote, work, and relate to institutions today.

Together, Bridge America and This American Mosaic aim to make America legible to itself—economically, culturally, and politically—at a moment when the country is deeply divided and searching for a way forward.

Michael is also the President of Byrd Capital Strategies, where he advises entrepreneurs, investors, and organizations on political networks strategies that strengthen innovation and free-market systems in America. That work grounds his civic projects in a practical understanding of how capital, influence, and policy actually function in the real world.

Across all of his work, Michael’s guiding belief is consistent:

Capitalism and democracy are the least-worst systems we have—so we better make sure they succeed!

As America celebrates 250, Michael’s mission is to make her more exceptional than ever.