Dr. Michelle Weise
Dr. Michelle Weise 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 to its Radar Class of 2021, one of 30 management and leadership thinkers in the world to watch, and shortlisted her for its Talent Award.
Her leadership roles include serving as vice chancellor of strategy and innovation at National University System, senior advisor at Imaginable Futures, and 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 nonprofit and venture-backed startups as well as serving as a commissioner for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie 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 appeared in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and on PBS NewsHour.
Michelle is a former Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Harvard and Stanford. She received her doctorate from Stanford in 2008, and in 2024, Indiana Tech awarded her an honorary doctorate.