Michelle Torgerson is dedicated to ensuring education equity for children and families, so that all children have access to the high-quality resources critical to their lifelong success and wellbeing. She has spent 20+ years leading organizations across the country and working alongside communities.

Her approach is equal parts creative, visionary social entrepreneur, and technical turn around executive. Michelle’s career has been focused on creating, growing, and sustaining award winning nonprofit organizations, ensuring measurable impact and long-term viability. She is seasoned in revenue generation including securing startup funding, building boards, creating long range philanthropy and sales engines.

Throughout her career, her focus on radical collaboration through conversations and movements that cross issue areas and sectors has been integral to her success.

Michelle is known for building strong teams with an emphasis on managing for measurable results, fostering team relationships, and creating a culture that develops hard skills and knowledge sharing.

Michelle joined Raising a Reader in June of 2018 as President and CEO and led the organization through one its largest shifts forward in the organization to date. Significantly, this included pivoting the organization’s approach to serving community amid the Covid-19 pandemic by launching two new program offerings which led to increasing the organization’s annual impact reach by nearly 50%. Michelle is proud to be a returning member to Raising a Reader, she previously served the organization, earlier in her career, as an outreach and development manager and was thrilled to come back to a mission that she loves.

Previously, Michelle was senior executive director of Reading Partners, a San Francisco-based literacy intervention organization. There she led the strategic regional growth in the Bay Area, St. Paul, MN and Tulsa, OK.

She also held executive positions at College Possible, a St. Paul based, national nonprofit that makes college admission and success possible for low-income students. She led the organization’s strategic replication, fundraising, and growth into new sites including Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Omaha.

As a management consultant to nonprofits and foundations in Los Angeles, Michelle served as the Vice President at Draper Consulting Group. She worked with over 40 clients in her five-year tenure during the 2008 recession covering a broad range of important issues areas including education, the arts, social services, and health care.

Michelle’s dedication to equity is in part informed by her experience as a National Urban Fellow where she currently serves as founding co-chair of the Alumni Advisory Board. She also serves on the San Francisco Bay Area Advisory Boards of Reach Out and Read, and Parent Child +.

Michelle graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science and received her Master of Public Administration from Bernard M. Baruch College as a National Urban Fellow.

Michelle is honored to have been recognized for her contributions, as the recipient of the State Farm and Golden State Warriors 2017 Community Achievement Award for her service in the San Francisco Bay Area and Emerging Philanthropy Leader of the Year awarded by EPIP for her service in Los Angeles in 2012.

Favorite Book from the RAR Collection:
My Friends by Taro Gomi