Michael Solis is Executive Director of Writers & Books, a Rochester, NY based nonprofit literary arts center that fosters and promotes reading and writing as lifelong activities for people of all ages and backgrounds. Before that, he served as Localization Expert, supporting the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva. He did that as a member of Ireland's Rapid Humanitarian Response Roster through the Department of Foreign Affairs. In this role, Michael will be helped IOM's country and regional offices with the delivery of a new Localization Framework to shift greater resources and power to local frontline actors, with a focus mainly on emergency contexts. That followed nearly 12 years of working with Trócaire, one of Ireland's leading international non-governmental organizations, in Latin America, Sierra Leone, and Kenya. He is the author of a young adult novel, Deficient. A 2010 Mitchell Scholar, he led development and humanitarian aid interventions, including during the West African Ebola crisis, 2017 mudslide in Freetown, and COVID-19 pandemic. Michael served as the elected representative of the international NGO community in Sierra Leone, and was an advisory board member to the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute. Passionately committed to human rights, he studied International Human Rights Law at the University of Galway, as well as Gender Studies and Development at Central American University in Nicaragua. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Princeton.

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