Michelle Abou-Raad

About Michelle

Michelle Abou-Raad is a first-generation Lebanese-American, born and raised in the suburbs of Boston. She was awarded the Cardinal Medeiros Scholarship to attend Boston University where she graduated in 2016 with honors in International Relations and Middle East & North Africa Studies. The first member of her family to attend college, Michelle has focused her studies and career on empowering underserved communities. While at BU, she wrote an honors thesis and conducted field research about the efficacy of vocational programs for refugee women. She also co-founded Urban Refuge, a mobile application that helps refugees and vulnerable individuals locate aid and services in cities. She worked in international development at Creative Associates, managing multimillion-dollar capacity building projects in the Middle East. She then moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she worked in strategy consulting at Strategy& (part of the PwC network) and helped public and private sector clients develop strategies to pursue growth and create value in developing markets. Michelle spent her Luce year in Thailand, where she worked with ChangeFusion (CF), a social enterprise incubator based in Bangkok, and some of the social enterprises supported by CF, such as Local Alike, a community-based tourism social enterprise.