Michelle Rich

There’s nothing funnier than a British comedy. Remember the one when the uncle wore his wife’s red wig downstairs to the formal dinner and the butler hooked it on the handle of his serving tray and pulled it off on to a serving tray? And the 90-year-old matriarch of the house stoically remarked to the server, “Godfrey that goose needs to be trimmed.” While competently waiting on tables in her former life, Michelle never experienced such absurdity, but as a huge fan of British comedy, she is delighted by droll and dry humor.

After high school in Des Moines, with scholarship in hand, Ms. Rich enrolled at Tulane University in New Orleans. While in college, between classes and her work in promotion and public relations in the music industry, she found time to write for the Hullabaloo, the student paper. After graduating with a double major in political science and communications, she grudgingly left the great music and culture of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and returned to Des Moines.

Michelle enrolled in Drake University’s College of Business and Public Administration graduate program and volunteered with the Young Women’s Resource Center while working as a media buyer at the Iowa Newspaper Assocation. She graduated with a Master of Public Administration with an emphasis on public policy and joined SPPG as a senior program manager. “As a young woman, I wanted to define myself. Enrolling in Tulane was a good start. Working at SPPG allows me to use creativity and my experience in marketing and media, with a focus on public policy.”

Rich is not only delighted by droll and dry humor, she savors it and practices it with her friends and colleagues. “I want to make our services the best they can be, which means looking at a lot of options and taking seeds of ideas and expanding them. Sometimes being a little cynical helps me understand people better.” Maybe it also helps understanding those British comedies.