Strategic advisor, risk educator, policy analyst, and best-selling author Michele Wucker coined the term “gray rhino” as a call to decision makers to take a fresh look at obvious, probable, impactful risks and how we respond to them. Her goal is to help people to act on what’s right in front of us instead of freezing and getting trampled.

Michele’s work in risk-based decision making, strategy, and governance draws on decades of experience in global economic policy and as a media and think tank executive. She delivers keynote addresses and workshops all around the world.

Her four books include the influential global bestseller, THE GRAY RHINO, and the sequel, YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK. Michele’s first two books, WHY THE COCKS FIGHTand LOCKOUT, continue to influence leaders and scholars working on the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and immigration policy.

Michele is founder of the Chicago based advisory firm Gray Rhino & Company. She also teaches at the University of Virginia’s Center for Public Safety and Justice and at the DCRO Risk Governance Institute.

She has been recognized as a 2009 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, among other honors.

Once upon a time, Michele was a media and think tank CEO, among other formative roles and adventures. Those led to her work today, which shapes high-level business and policy debates and risk related decisions all around the world.

She is proud to help leaders and citizens understand that each one of us has a choice to act, seeing and seizing opportunities instead of letting avoidable threats escalate into full-blown crises.