Michelle Montserrat Oliva (She / Her)

A versatile management consultant, leadership coach, facilitator, and program manager with twenty years of experience cutting across and connecting public, private, and nonprofit sectors in both US overseas-based roles: Michelle holds an Executive Certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University and an MBA from ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Since serving as a US Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia, Michelle has worked in more than 20 countries across North America, China, UK and Europe, East and Southern Africa, North Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, and has lived in Argentina, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Sudan, Spain, and the United States. As the founder of Purpose Within, a small, women-owned, and minority-owned (SWaM) Business, she provides leadership/team development and organizational development/learning services, including leadership coaching, training, and facilitation; and delivers project management and program design support services to other training and capacity building providers. Her experience includes onsite, virtual, and blended learning design and delivery of cohort-based leadership development programs, as well as project-based action learning. Her past professional experience includes US- and overseas-based roles as an organizational development advisor, management consultant, and project manager across a range of sectors from agribusiness to financial services to media to energy and environment, in economic and international development. Her project leadership and management experience spans the project life-cycle from proposal development, program design and implementation, and financial and HR management for multi-million dollar grants and contracts.