Michaela Leslie-Rule joined See Change in 2011 as Senior Storyteller. Over the past decade she has worked as a performing artist and activist in the United States, South Africa, Tanzania and Switzerland. Michaela is also a researcher and filmmaker and is the producer and director of 8 Women/Wanawake 8, a short documentary film dealing with Tanzanian women's experiences of and beliefs about gender-based violence. Her film premiered at the 2010 Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) and is one output of her master's thesis research, exploring intimacy, sexuality and violence in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This qualitative research and the film methodology she created for it were honored at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna (2010), where she was awarded the IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Award for the Behavioral Sciences.

Michaela is particularly passionate about empowering citizens to engage in advocacy and activism through the use of narrative and storytelling. She has investigated the intersection between advocacy and narrative using varied creative mediums including, theatre, dance, text and film, and is committed to working with diverse and often marginalized populations. Michaela has taught workshops in storytelling and performance at juvenile detention facilities and women's prisons in the United States, Switzerland and South Africa; collaborated with commercial sex workers to create a PhotoVoice project in Tanzania and; created live performances with HIV positive women and street youth in South Africa. In 2011 she directed 20 incarcerated women at the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women in an original performance piece.

Michaela holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Experimental Theater from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, a Master of Public Health in global health and a Master of Public Administration - both from the University of Washington.