Michelle Witthaus, BA

Michelle Witthaus, BA

Program Manager

Michelle Witthaus is the Program Manager for Health Equity Works and oversees the project’s strategic partnerships and community-centered initiatives including efforts to improve the region’s access to affordable and inclusive housing. Michelle has a diverse background in education, community organizing, and philanthropy. Before joining Health Equity Works, Michelle worked as Program Associate for the Incarnate Word Foundation, where she managed grantee partnerships, foundation programs, and philanthropic collaborations. Prior to her work at Incarnate Word, she launched an initiative called Participatory Budgeting–St. Louis, which aimed to bring about a more democratic way of spending public money. The initiative was launched in St. Louis’s Sixth Ward and allowed residents to decide how to spend 40% of the ward’s capital improvement funding. At the time of inception, St. Louis was the fourth city in the United States to implement this inclusive process.