Michael Wood-Lewis

Michael Wood-Lewis has been pulling neighbors together into community since his Indiana childhood spent organizing ball games and visiting neighbors on his evening paper route. Decades later, he and his wife Valerie founded Front Porch Forum, which hosts a network of online local forums that blankets every town in Vermont. For every 1,000 households in the state, FPF has 750 members. The resulting news sharing and community building earned a Knight News Challenge award. Previously, he led an innovative trade association of New England utilities. Earlier, he guided a consortium of U.S. municipal leaders in developing environmental technologies, building on his experience as an inventor of high-tech recycling equipment. He earned a masters in engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, as well as an MBA.