Michelle’s career has been defined by standing up for equity and access for disenfranchised individuals and communities. Prior to joining LIFT, she spent nearly 20 years leading youth and community development efforts in New York and Los Angeles. In January 2019, Michelle Rhone- Collins was named CEO of LIFT. Joining the organization in 2012 as the Founding LIFT-Los Angeles Executive Director, Michelle seeded many of the organization’s programmatic innovations that are now core to LIFT’s nationwide program model, most notably the focus on an intergenerational approach to breaking the cycle of poverty, the integration of financial coaching into traditional supports, and giving cash directly to parents in recognition of their roles as CEOs of their families.
Michelle LIFTs because she believes in the transformative power of “hope, money and love” – her signature take on LIFT’s special sauce. Her own parents loved her fiercely and instilled in her the notion that she could do and be anything she wanted. She fully understands that this firm belief and investment in her possibility provided a buffer against socioeconomic inequity. It is an honor for her to pass on this transformative power of love, backed by rigor and dedication, to populations historically marginalized and unjustly overburdened by stigma, isolation, and disregard.
Michelle is dedicated to thinking big and innovating. Her ability to drive positive outcomes has resulted in innovative projects that are redefining the way the nonprofit sector approaches anti-poverty work and intergenerational mobility. Under her leadership, LIFT-LA participated in a ground- breaking randomized control trial to measure the effects of LIFT’s financial coaching program on the mental and physical health of members in the build of medical-financial partnership; and LIFT has become the Family Economic Mobility and Community Engagement subject matter expert for the Office of Head Start’s National Center for Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (NCPFCE).
Michelle has become a nationally recognized thought leader, representing the voice of female leaders of color in the social impact sector who has been featured in SSIR, Variety magazine, LA Magazine, NPR’s Marketplace, and the 2018 United State of Women Summit, amongst others. She is a Senior Fellow at both the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab at the USC Marshall School of Business, a Promise Venture Fellow, and part of the inaugural class of ProInspire’ s Catalyst Collective of BIPOC nonprofit executives across the country.
Michelle resides in Los Angeles and is the proud mother of two beautiful children who are her ultimate source of motivation and inspiration. She loves them fiercely.