Michelle Jewsbury is an international philanthropic, speaker and author who has traveled the world as an advocate for the less fortunate. In May 2014, she took her first humanitarian trip to Guatemala where she helped an orphanage on the Rio Dulce. Her next mission trip took her to Kenya, Africa with Kizimani, a non profit that focuses on bringing hope and sustainable change to impoverished communities. In 2015, she embarked in a career as Vice President for Young Vision Africa, a non-profit organization that encourages young leaders in Sierra Leone to make lasting changes in their country.

Also in 2015, Michelle joined a team of people in Hyderabad, India where she worked with Back2Back at one of their orphanages. Michelle left her position with Young Vision Africa in August 2016 to focus her efforts on ending domestic violence. Her desire to help victims of domestic abuse came from personal experience in such a relationship. Michelle was with her assailant for three years where she endured physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse. Michelle wrote, produced and performed a critically acclaimed play about her experience entitled But I Love Him. The play debuted at the largest Solo Festival on the West Coast, The White Fire SoloFest, with a nearly sold out performance in February 2016. The show, also staged in the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival, received multiple reviews and commendations.

Michelle has had numerous appearances on talk shows, speaking engagements and workshops and has led multiple seminars on the harsh reality of violence against women. She recently was interviewed on the She Found Joy podcast with Lauren Gaskill and spoke at Celebrate Recovery at Bel Air Church. She has since completed her memoir with the same title as her play. But I Love Him is a painful yet inspirational true story of a strong, independent woman caught in the horrifying cycle of domestic violence and how she got out. In this book, she shares the details of her struggle with genuine honesty, taking the reader on a twisted journey of love, pain and unyielding brutality that eventually leads…to peace. Mixing statistics, research and resource with her own account (and even some humor), Michelle shows just how far someone in her situation can sink, why it happens and how they can always pick themselves back up. Those who hear her story will walk away with a newfound understanding about the horrors of domestic violence, how to escape and how to build a new, healthier life. Her book is scheduled to be released in 2019.

In July 2017, Michelle founded Unsilenced Voices, a 501(c)3 nonprofit focused on inspiring change in communities around the globe by encouraging victims to break free and survivors to speak up about domestic violence and sexual assault. The mission of Unsilenced Voices is to provide shelter and relief to survivors of domestic abuse and sexual gender-based violence worldwide. unsilencedvoices.org

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