Michelle Weise

Background

About Michelle Weise

Dr. Michelle Weise (pronounced W-ice) is the Chief Impact Officer of The Kern Family Foundation. She is also the co-host of “A Life Worth Working,” a podcast about finding meaning in the work that we do. Her award-winning book, Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet, was published in 2021, the same year that Thinkers50 named her one of 30 management and leadership thinkers in the world to watch. Her leadership roles include serving as Vice Chancellor of Strategy and Innovation at National University System, Senior Advisor at Imaginable Futures, Chief Innovation Officer of Strada Education Network as well as of Southern New Hampshire University. With Clayton Christensen, she co-authored the book, Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution (2014) while leading the higher education practice at Christensen’s Institute for Disruptive Innovation. Her service work includes advising and mentoring numerous non-profit and venture-backed startups as well as serving as a commissioner for Massachusetts Governor Baker’s Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning, Harvard University’s Task Force on Skills and Employability, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education. In addition to a TED talk, Michelle's commentaries on redesigning higher education and developing more innovative workforce and talent pipeline strategies have been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and on PBSNewshour. ​ Michelle is a former Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Harvard and Stanford. She received her doctorate from Stanford in 2008, and in 2024, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Indiana Tech. https://michelleweise.substack.com/