Michelle Beaver
Founder and executive director

Michelle is a teaching artist at Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and taught journalism for six years at ASU and Scottsdale Community College. She’s a Flinn-Brown Fellow (bestowed from the Arizona Center for Civic Leadership) and is founder and director of the Arizona chapter of PEN America.

She reported full time for the Associated Press and Bay Area News Group, taught journalism to teens from 33 countries through the Louis August Jonas Foundation
and served as editor in chief of three national medical magazines.

Michelle is the ghost author of a New York Times best-selling health book (released in 2012) and wrote two health books for the Dummies franchise.

She's freelanced for the USA TODAY Network, Los Angeles Review of Books and many other outlets. Michelle has volunteered weekly at several nonprofits for two decades, mostly for organizations that help at-risk youth.

News Literacy for Arizona
Leadership Team

Advisory Board

Members of the News Literacy for Arizona advisory board have diverse experience ranging from state-level library leadership and Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalism, to expertise in nonprofit management and education.