Contributor

Michelle Nunn

CEO of CARE

Michelle Nunn is president and CEO of CARE USA, a leading humanitarian organization that fights global poverty and provides lifesaving assistance in emergencies. CARE places a special focus on working alongside poor girls and women because, equipped with the proper resources, they have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty. Last year, CARE worked in 90 countries around the world and reached more than 72 million people. Nunn, who took the helm of CARE in July, has devoted her 25-year career to civic and public service as a social entrepreneur, a nonprofit CEO and a candidate for U.S. Senate. She co-founded the volunteer-mobilization organization Hands On Atlanta, growing its volunteer engagement model from a single entity to a national network of more than 50 affiliates. Nunn helped initiate and oversaw that group’s merger with Points of Light, founded by President George H. W. Bush to promote volunteerism. The merger yielded the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, with affiliates across the globe engaging more than 70,000 corporations and nonprofit organizations. Nunn served as Points of Light CEO from 2007 to 2013. Under her tenure, the organization spearheaded a variety of innovations including a Civic Accelerator for entrepreneurial ventures, the Corporate Institute and the Billion and Change initiative generating billions of dollars of corporate pro bono commitments. As a respected and nationally recognized leader in the service and nonprofit sector, Nunn served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Service and Civic Participation and as a co-convener of the ServiceNation Coalition, which helped pass the bi-partisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award and honorary degrees from Oglethorpe University and Wesleyan College. The NonProfit Times has named Nunn seven times to its annual “Power and Influence Top 50” list of change agents from the nonprofit sector. Georgia Trend magazine named Nunn — a Georgia native — one of its “100 Most Influential Georgians,” and the Anti-Defamation League awarded her its 2005 Touch of Liberty. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia, Nunn majored in history with a minor in religion. She received a Kellogg Fellowship to study faith and social justice in more than a dozen countries, from Peru to Namibia to Jordan. Nunn earned her Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she received the prestigious Public Service Fellowship. Nunn lives in Atlanta with her husband, Ron Martin, and their two children, Vinson and Elizabeth.