Michelle was born in Iran to a Chinese/Vietnamese mother and a Black/Caucasian father. Her father, once a minister from North Carolina, was a technical writer who wrote manuals for the defense industry and taught her how to use Ventura Publisher when she was eleven. She has spent most of her career working as a creative at nonprofit institutions such as the ACLU, the MOCA, and Sundance Institute, host of the Sundance Film Festival. She is a first generation college graduate and has a BFA from the SAIC and MFA from USC. She grew up in Hawthorne, California. Traveling back and forth between her home and her high school in West Los Angeles, Michelle noticed how the quality of the landscape impacts the quality of life.