Michelle Mush Lee

Consulting Partner

Expertise: Executive Management, Organizational Culture & Change Management, Major Donor Strategy, Narrative Change & Strategic Communications

Michelle Mush Lee is a former executive director, cultural strategist, policy advocate, consultant, and published poet with 23 years of experience designing strategies for communities across the country. As the former executive director of the country’s largest youth literary spoken word nonprofit (Youth Speaks, Inc), her leadership in the national literary arts, youth development, and narrative change fields have been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, MacArthur Foundation, Academy of American Poets, Harvard University, City of Oakland, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She has successfully managed $10M in assets, launched national culture change initiatives; assembled strategic partnerships for grant makers committed to equitable communities and the arts; and is an organizing voice for children, artists, AAPI communities, and cross-cultural solidarity.

Since 2017, Michelle has consulted, coached, and personally advised over 150 leaders and 30 nonprofits, city agencies, foundations, entrepreneurs, and LLC’s to support internal organizational change and leadership development initiatives through her story-based consulting practice, Whole Story Group, LLC, now Michelle Mush Lee Consulting.

Her leadership is a rare blend of visionary and grounded action. She is a do-er with remarkable cultural fluency, and a record of meeting organizations at moments of change and guiding them with heart and grounded leadershipntowards new growth.