As the Resilience and Personal Effectiveness Program Manager for the Office of the Chief, Work Environment & Performance Office, U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Michelle partners with employees at every level. She provides mindfulness and coaching through national and individual sessions within the USFS’s with an invitation for all federal agencies within the government. Michelle is also a senior mentor for the federal internal coaching training program. Additionally, Michelle is an ICF-PCC coach and a National Board Health & Wellness Coach & a certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. Michelle was featured in the April 2018, 5th anniversary edition of Mindful magazine for her work around MBSR and coaching. TIME magazine’s September 2018 anniversary addition also featured Michelle for her work in teaching mindfulness. Michelle is also a certified forest therapy guide.
Michelle uses the skills and techniques from the training she received at Duke Integrative Medicine on a daily basis. Her USFS clients spend their professional lives in the service of others and some are in positions of making decisions that may have life or death consequences, both for themselves and those they serve. Michelle holds the space to empower her USFS clients to notice what their body and mind need and to take a breath before reacting or responding. She partners with her USFS employees to help them live the lives each one of them really wants on and off the job. Michelle uses coaching tools to help them learn to set work down when connecting back with their families, to be fully present, and to let go of all the stressors they are carrying. She takes great comfort in seeing her clients benefit from coaching by living their personal and professional lives with purpose and authentic happiness.
“Being a Certified Integrative Health Coach brings me so much joy. To be able to partner with my clients, who are also my colleagues, and be their reflective mirror is an honor. It allows them to see what they are saying or doing and if that is what they want it to look like. It is a joy to see them thrive and live the life they have always wanted for themselves with presence nonjudgmentally.”
