MICHELLE is a multidisciplinary designer and art director based in San Francisco, California. She loves to help shape the way people experience the world through design, and believes in the power of visual communication to help educate and expose us to new things. In her career, Michelle has created educational exhibits for museums, and developed branding and corporate identities. She is currently working in marketing and packaging design as a creative lead at People Against Dirty, the parent company of the brands Method and Ecover, which have pioneered using plastic recovered from the ocean in their packaging.
Michelle’s first exposure to the problem of plastic debris in our oceans was as a volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, where sea lions, elephant seals and dolphins afflicted by entanglements are treated and rereleased into the wild. Her goal is to bring people who aren’t able to join the crew on the boat into the North Pacific, to see the problem first hand through the power of visual storytelling. She aims to use her design skills to raise awareness about what we each can do to reduce the use of plastic in our day-to-day lives, and to use what she learns onboard to influence the packaging industry in a positive way.