MEET MICHELLE
Michelle Milne is a hardworking, compassionate, creative, and committed leader who starts her work by listening.
As a director and producer, she has managed budgets, timelines, and teams of people to create unified projects. Her background in education, facilitation, coaching, and the arts has given her insight into the realities of the challenges people face – and the ways people find to address those challenges.
Many people know her as an actor, director, writer, producer, and educator. But her work and experience has crossed into many other sectors as well.
She knows what it is to clean hotel rooms and be a server in restaurants, because she has done it herself. She was on the catering staff at Eli Lilly’s corporate offices, won monthly awards in telephone sales, and was given increasing responsibility in retail positions. She was promoted from being a temp to being hired as project manager for non-profit management research at IUPUI, and served as an assistant Development Director at Habitat for Humanity. These were formative experiences that impact how she thinks about society, systems, and what people need in order to best live the lives they want to live
She has led or co-led group trainings for everyone from nursing staff to architects; juvenile detention centers to lawyers, K-12 students to multidisciplinary artists. She has been on faculty at colleges and universities, taught classes in jails and prisons, and led workshops for pastors, speakers, librarians, and the general public.
She has created her own businesses as a coach and facilitator, as a somatic movement educator; as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language; and as a professional director, producer, and performer.
For several years, she was a journalist and editor for an award-winning independent publication, where she wrote in-depth features about healthcare, business, labor, and political figures – as well as assigning, managing, and editing other contributing writers, and collaborating with the editorial team to create a cohesive publication.
She knows what it is to work hard – and to struggle anyway. She knows that filling out paperwork for subsidized housing or healthcare assistance can take hours away from work and relationships, and can cause unnecessary headaches. She knows the anxiety of wondering how to replace a car that is on its last legs, or pay for a dentist appointment when money is short. She knows how chronic pain, invisible illness or disability, and trauma can impact every aspect of life.
And she also has a unique view of the ways people are generous to each other; the ways we instinctively collaborate to make beautiful and joyful things happen amidst pain or conflict – and how this happens across faiths, party lines, and perceived differences, when we are at our best.
Michelle consistently works to bring out the best in the people around her. The majority of her adult life has been spent bringing groups of people together – people who have different opinions and perspectives – working with them and leading them to create a world they envision together.
Through everything Michelle does, she listens, observes, connects, and problem-solves to improve the lives of the people around her.
