Rev. Michelle D. Williams, MTS, CDE®, is an ordained clergywoman, social entrepreneur, certified diversity executive, and the author of My Cape Has Holes In It: What Happens When Superwomen Fail. She is the founder and CEO of Shalom Consulting and currently serves as Interim Executive Director of the GLB Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice. She is also the co-author of The Diversity Playbook: Recommendations and Guidance for Christian Organizations (Abilene Christian University Press, 2021, foreword by Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil), and the author of two fiction novellas published under the pen name M. Denise.

Over a career spanning more than two decades, Michelle has worked at the intersection of justice, care, and leadership in some of the most demanding roles a woman can hold. She has been a social worker with at-risk populations, a youth and associate pastor, a dean of a graduate theological seminary (Gordon-Conwell), a Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and a coach and consultant to executives, organizations, and churches navigating crisis and change. She was ordained at 23 and has held virtually every pastoral role available to women in ministry. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Anderson University School of Theology and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wright State University.

Michelle’s writing has appeared in Mutuality (Christians for Biblical Equality), where she has published on women in ministry, the Superwoman Syndrome, and the women leaders of the Azusa Street Revival, among other topics. She is also a dedicated blogger at www.inpursuitofshalom.com and has developed and facilitated more than a dozen professional workshops on topics such as resilience, racial justice, intercultural competence, and soul care for women in service professions. Her workshop “Let’s Talk: For Writers, Readers, and Worn-Out Women” is a direct precursor to the book you now hold.

In 2019, a personal health scare made vivid what Michelle had long witnessed in others: the devastating cost of the cultural expectation that women must perform at all costs. That reckoning became the heartbeat of My Cape Has Holes In It. She writes from inside the cape — not above it. Michelle is based in Indianapolis, Indiana.