From Moree in North-West New South Wales, Michelle is from a family of five children and was the only one to finish high school and achieve higher education. Michelle started as an Aboriginal Health Worker in 1993 but realised that nursing would allow a greater scope of practice and management of the issues faced by her people, so she went on to complete a Bachelor of Nursing as a mature aged student at the University of Western Sydney in 2008. She finished her university studies with the help of the NSW Health Nursing and Midwifery Scholarship and Cadetship program and has been a member of CATSIN (now CATSINaM) since 2003.

Michelle’s passion has always been divided between providing grass roots care within the community as well as empowering and enabling more of her people to become nurses and midwives. These passions have seen her working in a variety of high-level roles to grow career pathways for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, ensuring a First Nations voice in health care delivery, to contributions in curriculum development at universities to increase knowledge and awareness of issues pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Currently, Michelle is working as Nurse Navigator for Queensland Health, where she would like to create opportunities for sharing cultural knowledge and learning with colleagues, ultimately increasing cultural safety in the workplace for growing the representation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives workforce in Queensland Health.