Michelle Ciccarelli Lerach is a lawyer, entrepreneur and activist. Her legal practice focuses on complex civil actions representing employees, consumers and investors in class and derivative actions. In 2008, she received the Consumer Attorneys of California WLC Outstanding Consumer Advocate award before taking a sabbatical from her full-time practice to further commit herself to social activism.

An “agvocate” for regenerative food, she founded both the Cali-Baja Berry Good Night and Berry Good Food Foundation to advance a healthy, integrated food system by educating, connecting and supporting local food producers and consumers. She hosts the BGFF-sponsored award-winning Future Thought Leaders program on UCTV with more than 15 million views. She was an Executive Producer of Kiss the Ground and an Advisor to the nonprofit behind the documentary. An outspoken critic of GMO labeling policy, she served on the steering committee of Californians for GE Labeling and helped launch GMOScience.org.

She is Chair of the University of California Press Foundation and Member of the Board of Directors of the press, focused on progressive scholarship in the arts, environmental sciences and humanities, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Women Peacemakers Program at the Kroc Institute for Peace at USD. She previously served as a consultant to the Liberian Ministry of Gender and Development.

She is a painter and sculptor; she and her husband are avid supporters and collectors of art, regularly hosting high school and community college students for tours of their ethnographic art collection.