ABOUT MICHELLE
FIVE-TIME AWARD-WINNING CREATIVE PRODUCER/DIRECTOR
I’ve chased stories across volcanic islands, Zen temples, nuclear sites, prisons, and desert motels, always searching for the kind of character who makes you feel something.
I shape stories that straddle the sacred and the absurd: from social justice campaigns to soulful branded content to intimate profile pieces on puppets. My collaborators include a rotating cast of weird and wonderful humans.
When I’m not directing nonfiction, I’m filming 100 Days of Zen, a dark comedy one-woman series set in a rogue mountain temple, where self-help spirals into spiritual chaos.
Along the way, I’ve earned the trust of world-class collaborators like The Economist, Freethink, and Big Think, and gathered a few nods from the storytellling gods.
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Behind the Scenes
On set, directing a short doc for
The Economist Impact on the future of plastic.
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To thE curious souls
Things that don’t fit neatly into
a traditional bio
Before I told stories on camera, I collected a small pile of strange jobs that taught me how the world works (and why it sometimes doesn’t).
I was a congressional intern for the House Majority Leader, Dick Armey, whom I only saw once. More accurately, I was the lackey of a moderately angry woman with a GOP tattoo on her ankle, who assigned me the important task of opening all the mail from all the people who wanted to warn the Congressman about the aliens.
I was an apprentice of a Napolitano pizzaiolo, named Carmine, who spoke zero English and insisted that I would be a great pizzamaker if I would just stop dropping the pizzas on the floor, and if I would turn into a man.
I was a federal budget researcher at a very conservative think tank where I was very much a problem on a daily basis because I was raised by an NPR-listening, social worker father and a small-business owning mother who, after watching the Clarence Thomas hearings, cast a write-in vote for Anita Hill for President.
I was a small-time YouTube sensation for a few weeks, because I made a video asking the President to give me back my payroll taxes. He eventually gave everyone their payroll taxes back, but not because he saw my video.
I was an economic television pundit, until I quit because I did not like arguing on television with middle-aged white men for a living.
I was a wedding video editor after spending two uncomfortable years getting a D in multivariate calculus, which mysteriously turned into a B+ after the curve, subsequently earning me a piece of paper that made the provocative claim that I was a "master" of economics.
I was a lifestyle model whose main job was to take small children who were not my own and pretend like they believably came out of my body, while balancing the tiny beast on a fruit-shaped pool raft.
Currently, I observe curious things and tell stories about them.
(If you made it this far, you might just be my kind of strange.)
RECEIPTS FROM THE POOL FLOAT ERA
Feel a spark?
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