Michelle Healy
City and State: Washington, DC
Current Company and Position: Community Change, Campaign Director
Family: Children - Nora and Liam Olagbaju.
First Job: Stop & Shop Grocery Store (Bagger).
What it taught me: My first job was working at our neighborhood Stop & Shop - a union job. My dad spent 35 years as a butcher in the meat department at Stop & Shop stores throughout the greater Boston area. I kind of grew up in that store so it was great to be at the front of the store and hear from so many of the old timer’s stories about my dad. I also observed and was saddened to watch my proud dad and the other store employees be treated so badly by the management. It was so painful to see the power dynamic at play. I learned a lot about: how much coworkers matter; and how much solidarity on the job can make it easier to bear the times when bosses exercise petty power; how much having the union can give workers a way to stand tall on the job.
Best advice you could give someone starting out: Find your joy and lean into that on the job. Also, always have some recent examples of what you have made happen. It gives you pride but it also protects by equipping you with a concrete way to illustrate if you need to prove your worth.
Who is your hero and why? My father Michael Healy is my hero. As one of 15 children growing up in rural Ireland, he like so many of his generation had to immigrate to the U.S. for work. His parents had passed away. An amazing bond of love and solidarity united he and his younger siblings. Many of whom came in and out of our house my whole lovely but chaotic childhood. He was a decent and kind man who worked so hard each day to support his four children and his many siblings. He worked in cold, dangerous and messy conditions yet always dressed impeccably. He had a beautiful Irish tenor voice and went on to learn arias and operas and how to play piano and even cut a CD. I learned from him to look beyond who you think someone in a service job is and see them for the whole person they are.
Biography: Over the past few decades Michelle Healy has been one of the most accomplished union organizers of her generation, organizing hundreds of thousands of workers into SEIU including childcare, fast food, higher education and gig workers. Growing up in Quincy, MA, as the child of Irish immigrants who worked in the service and care industries, Michelle witnessed first-hand the dignity of labor and the quiet determination of immigrant families to put food on the table, keep the culture, push your children to succeed and as a family navigate the new. After 30 years with SEIU, Michelle has recently begun leading a national campaign focused on pensions, procurement and purchasing accountability with Community Change. She has settled in the D.C. area and is perhaps most proud of her wonderful twenty something children, Nora Olagbaju who works for a social justice organization in Los Angeles and Liam Olagbaju who is an aerospace engineer
