Michelle MIELLY is American and has several years of professional experience in the international context (France, Central America, the U.S., West Africa) as an educator, researcher, and consultant. A development anthropologist and culture specialist, she has been active in the field of development in both Costa Rica and Ivory Coast, having led projects for youth development and sustainable development/ecotourism initiatives and has worked extensively with international players in these fields.
In her research, Michelle has always focused on issues linked to identity, diversity, and the link to community. Her work on post-colonial women writers, development dilemmas, and an ‘aesthetics of necessity’ led her to continue exploring how identity is socially constructed and re constructed in different organizational and cultural environments. She is currently working on self-initiated expatriates, post-colonial migration & diaspora, women’s professional careers, and organizational cultural change.
In GEM’s Doctoral School Michelle has served since 2013 as academic director for the DBA Switzerland program, and is currently serving as the program director for the DBA USA and DBA India programs. In GEM’s Graduate School of Business between 2009-13 Michelle was program director of the MSc in Marketing program and launched the MSc in Management Consulting Program. She has taught and supervised modules on dozens of programs in the school’s many campuses including London, Georgia, Berlin, Shanghai, California State U Northridge, IMT Ghaziabad India, and Paris.
Among her courses she teaches Intercultural Management, International HRM, Business Ethics, International Negotiation, Research Methods, Global Work & Distributed Business Teams, Western Intellectual History, and Leadership. Michelle is very involved in the school’s pedagogical innovation programs focusing on student-centered active learning and Problem-Based Learning (PBL), specifically coordinating Live Business Case methodology in the Parcours Ulysse innovative pedagogy program. In addition she works closely with Boston University’s pre-Med and Engineering programs in Grenoble as professor of the program’s social science and ethnography courses.
Michelle holds Master’s degrees from Université de Grenoble (1991) & Pennsylvania State University (1994), and a PhD from Harvard University (2004).