WORKSHOP LEADER & COACH : Empowering Voice & Story
Michelle speaks, coaches and leads workshops on collaboration, storytelling and public speaking.
She teaches skills to empower individuals, build teams and forge community. Online and in-person workshops include:
- Sharing Your Voice and Telling Your Story with Clarity & Confidence
- Engaging Story & Play to Activate Joy, Empathy and Collaboration
- Unleashing the Creative Power of the Arts to Tell the Story of Your Community
Please contact her directly for individual coaching or details on these programs, which can be customized.
Michelle has led workshops for the Center for Spiritual & Ethnical Education and at national conferences including: Innovate-Brazil, National Association of Independent Schools, Network of Ensemble Theater and Arts Education Partnership.
She will be leading a workshop on Voice & Story-telling on October 26 at Colombia University - Teachers College, Spirituality in Education Conference.
SPEAKER : Activating the power of presence in the era of AI
Michelle is passionate about live connection (collaboration, play, story-telling) to balance the power of AI in this digital era. She often pairs her workshops with short talks and curated conversations.
At her 30th Harvard College Reunion, Michelle shared "Life Hacks from the Greeks to Us" a 5-minute TED-style talk offering three concrete tools to nurture presence, empathy and community. Her 15-minute TEDx talk "The Empathy Hack" offers a concise, practical introduction to Method Acting as a pathway to deepen human connection and forge social unity.
PROGRAM LEADERSHIP IN ARTS & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Michelle is experienced in arts leadership, program management and community engagement. She is committed to local-global collaboration.
At the International School of San Francisco, Michelle serves as Head of the Creative & Performing Arts Department and Artistic Director of its flagship theater program.
She has taught, coached and mentored hundreds of student-artists in the International and French Baccalaureate programs. She has directed over 15 productions, including full-scale musicals, classical plays and contemporary works.
She has led collaborations with local-global partners. These include:
International artist Moïse Touré (of Les Inachevés) has been a key thought partner over the past decade. In 2022, she interviewed him for HowlAround about his work on Hospitality. This paved the way for a third major collaboration, i.e. a year-long exploration of the theme at the International School of San Francisco, 2023-24.
From 2018-23, Michelle served as the founding coordinator of the International School of San Francisco's Urban Engagement Program. She created internships, partnerships and a speaker-salon series to take the school's work into the wider community.
As a 2023-24 Visiting Scholar at the CSEE, she deepened her work in community engagement as the chair of its virtual department on Service Learning, and co-chair of its planning team for its Service Learning Summit.
AN INTERNATIONAL & INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
Michelle's international and interdisciplinary approach reflects her artistic training at l'Ecole Jacques LeCoq, the Sorbonne (MA) and UCLA (MFA) as well as her study of social and political science at Sciences Po - Paris and Harvard University (BA).
As a coach, speaker and program leader, Michelle draws from over 20 years of experience as a professional theater artist (SAG/AFTRA/AEA) and international educator (California Teaching Certificate, Certificate in International School Leadership - PTC).
In addition to overseeing arts programs at the International School of San Francisco, Michelle teaches French university students as co-director of the Programme Baudelaire (University of Paris - Faculty of Pharmacy). She has taught young professional actors at Ecole de l'Acteur - Sophie Akrich and at the Ecole Supérieure de Comédien.ne.s par l'Alternance (ESCA), including a month-long intensive on Shakespeare VO/VF.
With Steve Morgan Haskell, Michelle also leads blue monkey works, a company dedicated to "exploring life on earth through investigation, collaboration and creation." Their most recent project was "blue monkey love cuts - redux" (San Francisco Fringe Festival - fall 2023).
TRANSLATION OF CONTEMPORARY FRENCH WRITERS
Fluent in Spanish and French, Michelle is passionate about translation, and often thinks of artistic sharing as an act of "translation" across time, space and culture.
In addition to leading foolsFURY's French Plays Project, (dedicated to the translation of contemporary French plays) for many years, Michelle has translated contemporary French writers, including Fabrice Melquiot, Leonore Confino and Nathalie Fillion.
She both translated and directed the professional US Premiere of Fabrice Melquiot's The Unheard of World (published through Exit Press).
As a translator, she has spoken on panels at the festival Traduire le Monde - VO/VF and at the Playwright's Festival of Contemporary French Playwrights, Des Voix - Found in Translation.
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