Alliance Executive Director Horizon Retreat

Elizabeth (Betsy) Schmidt is a professor of practice, specializing in nonprofits, social enterprises, and solutions-based policy analysis. She currently teaches two graduate school courses, Nonprofit Law and Management and Social and Environmental Enterprises, and two undergraduate courses, Making a Difference: Policies and Strategies for Successful Social Change and Catalyzing Change: Creating and Operating a Nonprofit.

Prior to UMass, she was at George Mason University, where she taught nonprofit and social enterprise courses, directed the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and ran a master’s program in social entrepreneurship. She has also taught at Vermont Law, William and Mary Law, and Marlboro College’s MBA for Sustainability program. In addition to academic positions, Schmidt has practiced law, consulted with nonprofits, and worked directly for nonprofit organizations in legal and management capacities. Among her accomplishments were the creation and development of a data licensing program at GuideStar and a distance learning program at Colonial Williamsburg.

Schmidt writes in the areas of nonprofit governance, accountability, policies, and ethics. She also writes about the legal framework for social enterprises. In addition to several articles, she is the author of Nonprofit Law: The Life Cycle of a Charitable Organization, publishing a third edition in 2021.

She has an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton and a law degree from Stanford University.

Michelle is a dynamic leader with over three decades of experience in nonprofit management, program design, facilitation, and coalition building. She is the Founder/CEO of Power4Good, a consulting firm providing services to build, grow and strengthen nonprofit organizations, coalitions, and communities, with a focus on strategy, social justice, equity and access. Michelle spent over a decade leading Youth Pride, Inc., the only statewide organization in Rhode Island dedicated to meeting the social, emotional and educational needs of LGBTQ+ youth, and has held myriad positions serving youth and young adults in the child welfare, education, and housing sectors. Since launching Power4Good in 2007, she has worked with some of RI’s most prominent and promising youth development, social service and community impact organizations. Michelle launched and secured a permanent ‘home’ for RI’s only street outreach project responding to the needs of unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness, and is part of the cross-sector team building a statewide system of care to end homelessness and housing instability among youth and young adults in Rhode Island. She holds a Master of Social Work degree from Boston University and a BSci in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. In addition to serving on the Swearer Center’s Community Advisory Board, Michelle is the board vice chair for COLAGE and  a member of the Highlander Institute board as well as and is a member of the RICoC. In their time with friends and family, Michelle enjoys food, running, belly laughs, hiking, campfires, volleyball, Tai Chi, and Netflix marathons.