Michele Bildner

Background

About Michele Bildner

Michele Bildner, DrPH, MPH, MCHES®, is an equity-focused public health leader with 15 years of experience leading change in communities using innovative collaboration, strategic management, and capacity-building approaches. She has developed coalitions and partnerships centered on addressing environmental racism, such as housing vacancy, demolition practices, healthy homes and energy efficiency, and complete streets in St. Louis, through strengths-based leadership, strong interpersonal skills, and networking with government officials, community residents, and the private sector. Her professional practice continues to evolve as public health needs intersect across sectors and industries, but at the core is a deep interest in identifying, diagnosing, and addressing wicked problems and organizational challenges, thriving on their complexity and messiness. Michele is a nationally recognized mentor, successfully bridging practice and academia through teaching and guiding public health students, as the 2022 recipient of the Karen Denard Goldman Award from SOPHE. She is a volunteer leader at SOPHE Midwest, hoping to advance public health policy, systems, and environmental changes and build a new cadre of health education specialist leaders in Missouri and Kansas. Since fall 2020, she has been a Project Manager at the CDC Foundation, where she co-creates public-private partnerships for chronic disease prevention and management through upstream organizational strategies and leverages available technical expertise versus implementing biomedical interventions. By centering the intended audience in all her change leadership work, she ensures co-creation and shared visioning for maximum buy-in, uptake, and sustainability. She is a content expert on leading teams through large-scale transformations through adaptive leadership with a proven track record of delivering results, as evidenced by her frequent public dissemination sessions with key audiences, accountability reporting to funders and donors, and exceptional written communication skills. Michele is proficient in project-managing complex and complicated initiatives from design through completion and leverages her skills in soft systems methodology, human systems dynamics, action learning, and participatory applied research for maximum impact and success.