Michelle Morazán Vice President, Policy, and Strategy Development
In her role as Vice President, Policy and Strategy Development, Ms. Morazán is responsible for all resource development, knowledge management, policy advancement, and strategic partnerships to promote the growth and impact of SOMOS. Among her responsibilities, she develops robust and timely impact strategies in collaboration with various funders while also implementing programs that ensure the organization’s sustainability. She also provides multidisciplinary and strategic support to launch critical population health programs focusing on preventative primary care. Ms. Morazán is in charge of creating strategies for primary care integration in health-based partnerships aligned with the organization’s evolving policy developments and priorities.
She is an accomplished community-based professional and educator with over two decades of experience in the public sector. She bridges the gap between research, policy, and practice in her work.
Michelle has excelled at working in partnership with diverse communities, public organizations, and local government agencies to improve their ability to engage the public and problem-solve. She applies insights gained as a nonprofit executive in her public policy research to contribute to a broader understanding of government-nonprofit contracting relationships. This research helps her develop sustainable approaches to funding community-based services.
For the past decade, Michelle has been a professor of American Political Science and Public Policy, designing undergraduate and graduate courses specifically for the diverse student bodies of the City University of New York and the State University of New York. In addition to lecturing, she continues to advance various research projects that pertain to community-based service organizations, helping to bring a greater understanding of how they operate in the context of federal, state, and local policies. She also extends her policy analysis toolkit and honed methodologies to help students develop and apply analytic skills to actionable research projects.
Since 2011, she has provided strategic consulting services to prominent local and national nonprofit and social enterprise endeavors. Before her consulting work, Ms. Morazán served in many capacities at Alianza Dominicana, which were integral to sustaining the organization’s $16M annual budget growth while spearheading a $26M capital campaign for a new community facility. Before this, she supported the launch of the New Democracy Project, an urban affairs research institute, and later assumed key roles in the strategic development of key government offices, including the Office of Public and Community Affairs under the New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein and the New York City Office of the Public Advocate Mark Green, serving in concurrent senior roles.
Her pointed understanding of the political and fundraising landscape gives her an unmatched ability to support justice-driven and equity-focused organizations in becoming more robust and more effective. Her lifelong commitment to helping communities of people of color across a broad range of issues has already led to many tangible and lasting benefits for the organizations she has collaborated with and encountered.
Ms. Morazán is a doctoral candidate in public policy from the City University of New York Graduate Center. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the City University of New York Graduate Center, a master’s degree in public administration from New York University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in policy analysis from Cornell University.
