Michele Neff Hernandez is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Soaring Spirits International. Under Michele’s leadership, Soaring Spirits has grown from a dream on a napkin to a global nonprofit serving over four million widowed people to date.

Michele is the creator of the Camp Widow program, which will be featured in a PBS documentary available for streaming in late 2023. Camp Widow has supported and inspired thousands of widowed people since the first event held in July of 2009, and has grown from a single location in San Diego, California to now include two US locations and two international locations in Canada and Australia.

Michele was recognized as a 2021 Top Ten CNN Hero, was featured in the Gutsy docuseries on AppleTV+, and has received local, state, and national recognition for her work in founding Soaring Spirits, including a letter of recognition from then Vice President Joe Biden.

She has been privileged to offer resilience trainings and workshops to a variety of special communities, including National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, Special Ops Survivors, Hospice bereavement and patient care teams, medical professionals, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, first responders, business professionals and funeral directors internationally.

Michele is the author of Different After You: Rediscovering Yourself and Healing after Grief or Trauma, published by New World Library. Her passion for supporting widowed people, and the power of integration, fuels her presentations and her community activism.

Michele resides in Simi Valley, California and shares her life with her three amazing children, their awesome partners, her grand-cats, and one very Australian husband.

The work of Soaring Spirits is dedicated to the memory of Michele’s late husband Phillip Hernandez, who was killed in a cycling accident in August of 2005. His fun-loving, loyal and energetic spirit infuses her passion for creating community for widowed people.

Contact Info: [email protected]