Why Michelle? 

Michelle Risinger is an Innovation strategist and Human-Centered Design expert in sourcing customer insights and solutions with base of pyramid end-users. She currently serves as the Director of Innovation at Pact, a global non-profit based in Washington. Risinger creates enabling environments to catalyze local innovation and manages an award-winning portfolio of global innovation projects, with work featured by USAID, Forbes, Gates Foundation and Devex. As Pact's Human-Centered Design expert Risinger has led international teams across the world in human-centered design exercises resulting in receipt of the 2019 End-User Transformation award at the 2019 Design Thinking USA conference. Risinger has been a distinguished speaker at AIDS 2018, Stanford Social Innovation Review's Frontiers of Innovation Conference, the UN General Assembly NGO Expo and the Net Impact Annual Conference along with multiple university engagements nationally. With a Master's in International Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, Risinger was previously with the Red Cross managing humanitarian services in Iraq and Afghanistan.