Michele Hunt

Michele Hunt

Phones: (212) 333-2112

Cell: (646) 361-8369

Email: michelemariehunt@gmail.com

Website: www.dreammakers.org

Blog: And The Good News Is...

http://www.michelehunt.blogspot.com

Michele is a strategic advisor on leadership, team and organizational development, cultural transformation and communications. She is known internationally for her work helping leaders develop strong, cohesive leadership teams to enable them to create high-performance, high-energy organizations, capable of achieving superior results.

Michele works with leaders and their teams to help them come to shared interpretation and agreement on the organizations’ mission, vision, values and goals and to align their leadership decisions and behaviors with the same. She often partners with leaders on large-scale, whole systems transformation, which aligns the company’s culture, policies, systems and processes with their mission, vision values and goals – resulting in high-energy, high-performance Her methodology taps into the minds, hearts and imagination of all of the stakeholders. This approach creates shared understanding, commitment and shared ownership for achieving the results.

Michele launched her firm in 1995. Her customers have included leadership teams of: IBM, Motorola, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Popular Inc., (Banco Popular Puerto Rico, Banco Popular North America), SRA International, Bright China Management Institute, BHP of Australia, The Center for Digital Inclusion, Brazil, ABRH – Brazil, NASA, U.S. Veterans Health Administration, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. National Park Service, US Department of Education, Junior Achievement of New York, World Vision International, The Episcopal Divinity School at Harvard and the leadership team of the Chicago Public Schools. Popular Inc. and SRA joined Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For, after engaging in Michele’s vision and values transformation process. SRA has sustained that honor for 10 consecutive years.

Her work also includes communities. In 1998 Michele partnered with Aruba’s Quality Foundation in the facilitation of a national shared vision for the country of Aruba: Aruba, 2005. This process engaged, mobilized and energized the citizens in all sectors of their society in the creation of a shared vision. Their seven-point vision guided the development of their people, communities, businesses, government, education and their environmental policies.

Michele is also a keynote speaker at meetings and conferences around the world for businesses, nonprofit organizations and communities. Her presentations are founded in her belief that people are extraordinary and have the capacity to create far better futures than we have dared to dream. She comes to these beliefs through her personal life and professional experiences. Her beliefs have been validated through her research for her books and documentary about people who have dared to dreamed big and turned their dreams into reality and contributed to making the world a better place. Her public speaking topics include:

- Visionary Leadership: Putting Vision & Values to Work For All

- The Secret To Cultural Transformation: Participation, Collaboration and Shared Ownership

- The Power of DreamMakers: Personal Stories Of DreamMakers

In 1992 Michele served on President Bill Clinton’s Transition Team. In 1993 she was appointed by President Clinton to serve as the Executive Director of the Federal Quality Institute. The institute’s mission was to partner with government leaders in reinventing the U S government agencies. This was President Clinton’s initiative; Creating a Government that Works Better and Cost Less, lead by Vice President Al Gore. Michele brought the latest thinking and progressive leadership and management practices to this effort, to work alongside the Cabinet Deputy Secretaries and their leadership teams. She created public-private partnerships with world-recognized thought leaders including: Peter Drucker, John Gardner, Max De Pree, Frances Hesselbein, Peter Senge, and the participation of high performing corporations like GE and Herman Miller.

Prior to this appointment, Michele spent 13 years with Herman Miller, Inc., a Fortune 500 global office furniture company. She served on the executive leadership team as Corporate Vice President for People, reporting to Max De Pree, CEO and Chairman. In this capacity she facilitated the company’s organizational transformation. She was responsible for global Leadership Development, “Human Resources”, Quality Management, Learning and Development, Corporate Communications, and Change Management. The company’s organizational transformation resulted in Herman Miller becoming: Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Company and America’s Top 10 “Best Companies in America to Work For. The company also was recognized as the Best Company for Women, and The Best Company for Working Mothers. Herman Miller also received the prestigious Bertelsmann Award as The Best Managed Companies in the World, and numerous environmental awards. During her 13 years with the company, Michele also served as Director of Corporate Relations including: government, media, shareholder and community relations.

Michele began her career with the Michigan Department of Corrections as one of the first two female probation officers to supervise adult male felons on probation in Detroit, Michigan. She served as Executive Director of Michigan’s only halfway House for female felons, and later became Michigan’s first female Deputy Warden, leading programs for rehabilitation in a male prison.

Michele is the author of the book DreamMakers: Putting Vision and Values to Work, Foreword by Max De Pree, former CEO and Chairman of Herman Miller, Inc. In 2010 she published the second book in her DreamMakers series, DreamMakers: Agents of Transformation, published in Brazil and featuring Brazilian DreamMakers. She has contributed chapters to The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter Senge, Leading People by Robert Rosen, The Diversity Action Book by Janet Crenshaw Smith and Coaching by Values: A Guide to Success in the Life of Business and the Business of Life, by Simon Dolan She has also contributed articles to numerous publications including Leader to Leader publication, special tribute to the Peter F. Drucker Centennial.

Michele has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in the Executive Education Program at the McDonough School of Business. She served as a facilitator of Tomorrow’s Corporation at the Aspen Institute. She formally served on the board of directors of Hewitt Associates, Inc. and The ServiceMaster Company. She was a founding board member of the Society for Organizational Learning (SOL) founded by Peter Senge.

Michele currently serves on the international board of directors of the Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI), Brazil; the Fowler Center for Sustainable Development at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, The Deans Advisory Board at the University of Detroit and the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy. She has served on numerous non-profit boards including Holland Community Hospital, Goodwill of Grand Rapids, The Jessie Owens Foundation, and Union Institute and University.

Michele earned her Bachelor and Master’s degrees in sociology from Eastern Michigan University and University of Detroit, respectively.