Who I am Today

Erin Now: Let’s just say I survived the early years (barely) and now I’m off and running! I’ve figured out how to continuing traveling, while running my own consulting firm. I try and travel at least 2 months out of the year.

My consulting firm, Michelson Consulting Group (MCg), provides strategic advisory services to help citizen sector and for-profit institutions grow their philanthropic business. MCg creates business development strategies and implementation plans aimed at increasing assets under management. This is all a fancy way of saying that I’m a professional fundraiser.

For my full professional back story, check out my bio, Michelson Bio In short, I’ve split my career between the corporate and nonprofit worlds, working with the largest financial institutions and brokerage houses, as well as many leading nonprofit organizations.

I even founded and ran my own nonprofit for 4 years: Alliance for Women’s Equality (AWE). AWE provided pro bono strategic planning, communications, and fundraising consulting to women’s and girl’s rights groups. It was fantastic. And then it imploded.

All told, I’ve lived and studied in New Zealand, China, Hong Kong and South Africa. I’ve lived some of the US’ best cities: NYC, Chicago, San Francisco. I now live a wanna-be hermit existence in my mini-house in West Marin, California.

Mini Me: It all started with a growing obsession with the mini-house movement—which is less about living in a small space and more about de-cluttering your life with unessential items so that there’s room to concentrate on the important stuff.

To me, the important stuff comprises:

Erin

P.S. A firm believer in the motto “put-up or shut-up,” this year I fully embraced mini-dom and cleared my existence of waste. Check out how I live my mini life:

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 and is filed under Erin Now.