Michele is an award-winning communications and public relations expert specializing in social change, public diplomacy and media literacy. She is a communications consultant for clients in nonprofit, education, the arts and other industries. A dynamic storyteller, Michele captures the essence of what businesses need to communicate and ensures that messages make an impact and create results. She works in all aspects of her field: strategic planning, media relations, digital media, special-events, crisis communications, brand management, internal communications and content development for internet, video and print. Michele also offers customized training sessions on media literacy, which build more informed media consumers who own the skills to analyze news and social media posts, think critically and make educated decisions about media consumption and sharing.

Michele holds a Master of Public Diplomacy degree from the University of Southern California’s (USC) Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. Her studies include research on human rights and communications tools and techniques, including propaganda used during the Cold War era. She works extensively in human rights advocacy, using public diplomacy to raise international awareness about critical social issues. She presented at the US Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia on the subjects of indigenous land rights and security, was the lead human rights researcher for the USC MPD International Research Team in Indonesia and contributed research to a 2016 Human Rights Watch report on water rights in rural Bangladesh.

Complementing her strategic abilities and creative vision, Michele’s writing and production talents have earned an IABC Gold Quill Award, an IABC Silver Six Award, an APEX Award for Publication Excellence and an Orange County Register Golden Pen Award. She served as guest instructor at UCLA on crisis communications planning for non-profits and executive media interview training.