Soles4Souls is a Nashville-based charity that collects shoes from the warehouses of footwear companies and the closets of people like you. The charity distributes these shoes to people in need, regardless of race, religion, class, or any other criteria. Since 2005, Soles4Souls has given away over 14 million pairs of new and gently worn shoes (currently donating one pair every 7 seconds.) The shoes have been distributed to people in over 127 countries, including Kenya, Thailand, Nepal and the United States. Soles4Souls has been featured in Runner's World, Ladies’ Home Journal, National Geographic’s Green Guide, and The New York Times. It has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, BBC, CNN and thousands of regional news outlets across North America. Soles4Souls is a 501(c)(3) recognized by the IRS and donating parties are eligible for tax advantages. Anyone can join our cause, and we need your help.

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Aspen Ideas Festival

A conference that provides a forum for vibrant, intellectual engagement between leaders from around the globe and across many professional disciplines.  This is an annual event that provides a framework for the development significant ideas that contribute to making our world better.  www.aifestival.org

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The Mission

Water.org is challenging the traditional approach to assisting people in developing countries. Our goals are to draw attention to the world’s number one health problem, unsafe and inadequate water supplies, and to raise funds to help fight this immense problem – one community at a time.
Our mission is to inspire people to act:

Donors – to provide consistent financial resources with a sense of solidarity for those in need of safe water
Staff and volunteers – to seek innovative and efficient solutions to meeting the global water supply needs of today and tomorrow
People in need of safe water – to take the lead in meeting their own needs

Together, these people form the “waterpartnership” that will allow us to realize our vision.

Develop high quality, sustainable water projects. We use our expertise to foster high-quality, sustainable, community-level water supply projects. We promote innovative solutions that enable communities to take a leading role in solving their own water supply problems.

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The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1950 as the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. The organization is dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues." The institute and its international partners promote the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding in a nonpartisan and nonideological setting through regular seminars, policy programs, conferences, and leadership development initiatives. The institute is headquartered in Washington, D.C., USA, and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado (its original home) and near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay at the Wye River in Maryland. It has partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon, Tokyo, New Delhi, and Bucharest, as well as leadership initiatives in the United States and in Africa, India, and Central America.

Michael, as a Liberty Fellow, is a part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) sponsored by the Aspen Institute.  As an Aspen Global Fellow, he has plans to travel over the next two years to South Africa, South America (Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua) and to the Far East (Thailand and Hong Kong) to reconnect with other Aspen Global Fellows from the previously mentioned areas that he met during his participation in “The Era of Globalization” seminar in Amman (Dead Sea), Jordan in February 2011.

People to People Citizen Ambassador Law Institutes

On February 23, 2010, Michael received a letter from Gregg Herman, past Chair of the American Bar Association Family Law Section, inviting Michael, who has served for over a decade as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (Guardian Ad Litem) on the behalf of the interests of juveniles in our court system, to be a part of a special delegation.  The invitation was for Michael to serve as a Citizen Ambassador for the People to People Rule of Law Institute to Vietnam and Cambodia that October 2010.  This invitation ignited Michael’s interest as serving as an Ambassador for other such institutes for the People to People Citizen Ambassador Program in Law.

“Lawyers in the United States tend to get caught up in their local legal scene. It's good for us to go out and see the challenges experienced by our counterparts in other countries such as Cambodia, which has only 400 lawyers for 13 million people in a country recovering from genocide. Whether their country stands or falls will depend in part on the strength and legitimacy of the legal system they are struggling to put in place. We, as individuals, really can make a difference just by sitting down one on one and exchanging ideas that may help move that process forward."

– Richard Pena, Board of Governors, American Bar Association, and long-time People to People Citizen Ambassador delegation leader


In December 2011, Michael will serve as an Ambassador as a part of the Rule of Law Delegation to Rwanda.  In May 2012, Michael plans on serving as an Ambassador as a part of the Rule of Law Delegation to China.

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The CNN Freedom Project (Ending Modern-Day Slavery) is another effort I support and want other citizens of the world to support. With estimated numbers of 10 to 30 million people subjected to human trafficking, CNN has began a project to shine the light on this terrible reality and expose it for what it is.  CNN has joined the fight to end modern day slavery and shine a spot light on the horrors of modern day slavery, amplify the voices of the victims, highlight success stories and help unravel the complicated tangle of criminal enterprises trading in human life.  These are just a few efforts that I recognize and I encourage others to consider working on to bring relief.  Get involved in helping our fellowman and let's change the world for the better as we are all God's children and citizens of the world.

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