Michelle Villegas-Gold

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT MICHELLE VILLEGAS-GOLD

Dr. Michelle Villegas-Gold oversees strategic initiatives and Academic Health Department partnerships for ASU Health. She was the primary lead for designing and launching the new School of Technology for Public Health and Public Health Technology Corps. She brings over a decade of experience working in the fields of mental and global public health, primarily serving women and medically underserved communities.Michelle has been at ASU since 2018, first as a University Innovation Fellow with the Office of the President at ASU, where she developed and incubated new university-wide initiatives that advance ASU\'s charter and design aspirations, and then in the ASU Knowledge Enterprise for five years where she managed and grew health and clinical research and partnerships. From 20••••18 while pursuing her Ph.D, Michelle served as the Center-wide Research Assistant for the Center for the Future of Arizona. Before joining ASU, Michelle worked as a masters\' level counselor in several inpatient, intensive outpatient, and outpatient settings with children, adolescents, and adults specializing in suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and trauma, with particular expertise in Polyvagal Theory. Michelle has a strong track record of developing new, critical programs in low-resource settings to increase safety and resiliency among underserved and marginalized populations, including two groups for Trauma Healing Trauma Healing Services with La Frontera/EMPACT-SPC (Crisis Survival Skills group and Trauma Informed Yoga). For her dissertation, Michelle developed and beta tested a trauma-informed patient decision aid to empower student victims and survivors of sexual assault at Arizona State University to seek care and purse justice in real-time. After she graduated, Michelle worked with the Institute for Humanities Research at ASU to create a mobile friendly website and gifted the tool to the university. Here4U is live and available for ASU students, and Michelle continues to work closely with Education and Outreach Student Services to update and evolve the tool as needed.Michelle has a Ph.D. in Global Health from Arizona State University with a certificate in Women and Gender Studies, a Master of Public Health within the Global Health and Leadership track from New York University, and a Master of Counseling degree from Arizona State University. Michelle completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Arizona where she majored in Psychology and minored in French.