Lorraine Michael - Biography

Biography

Michael was born on March 27, 1943 to a Lebanese-Canadian family in St. John's, Newfoundland. She has completed degrees at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Toronto. She started her career as a high school teacher on Bell Island, and was a junior high school principal and teacher in Baie Verte, the Codroy Valley, on the Burin Peninsula, and in St. John's.

Michael has been a social activist and a feminist activist in Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as internationally. After leaving the teaching profession, she became Director of the Office of Social Action in St. John's where she worked on a number of coalitions for social justice, both regionally and nationally. In later years, while working with the Toronto-based Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice (ECEJ), she spoke on the subject of economic globalization in Mexico, Chile, and Zimbabwe. She has also worked with the Women and Work Committee of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and served for a period as the organization's Interim Executive Director.

Prior to her election as NDP leader, she was Executive Director of the Women in Resource Development Committee, consulting with industry, labour, government, and educators to achieve employment equity in natural resource development sectors in Newfoundland and Labrador. This work was an extension of her earlier work in Labrador as the Innu Nation nominee on the Voisey's Bay environmental assessment panel from 1997 to 1999.