Michelle Lee (Mush), Ed.M is a published poet, educator and arts and culture advocate who uses poetry to preserve the water of her story in this American desert. She moves from the intersection of mind, heart and spirit, and is moved by what learners do know.

Michelle’s presentations and storytelling have been featured on HBO, PBS, AfroPop, National Asian American Theater Festival, New Works Theater Festival, Under the Radar Festival and Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival. She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and an Ed.M. from San Francisco State University, with a focus on Equity and Social Justice.

A former Compasspoint Next Generation Leaders of Color Fellow, Michelle is frequently a featured speaker on racial literacy, spoken word pedagogies and contemporary youth poetry movements. Her writing is most recently featured in All the Women in My Family Sing, an anthology of prose and poetry of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Michelle serves on the Leadership Advisory Board for Alameda County Department of Education’s Integrated Learning Specialist Program and as a Senior Advisor of Pedagogy at Youth Speaks, Inc. She is the founding CEO of Whole Story Group, Inc., a creative consulting firm specializing in story-rich strategies for social change and collective liberation.