​Michelle Haywood

Founding Director

“Our hand-to-hand giving has been a wonderful, life-changing experience for some volunteers. You see it on the faces of the youth as seeds of empathy and social responsibility take root. The recipients have been incredibly touched to know that people of the community came together to work without a common purpose other than providing for them. I LOVE that the deepest impact of this work could never be counted."

​​With a newly acquired graduate degree (AU, SOC/MA ’92), Michelle Haywood quickly secured employment in her chosen field of entertainment public relations as Baltimore Arena’s Public Relations Coordinator with the Centre Group. But it wasn’t long before she recognized that her talents would best be invested at home in meeting the needs of her own growing young family. There would be time for her career later.

She dedicated the first decade of her children’s lives to creating a holistic education through home-schooling, community service, and other avenues. Meanwhile, she also worked as Marketing Manager in helping to build the first family business, Insuraty, Inc., now one of the east coast's largest African-American human resources consulting and group benefits brokerage.

Service to others continued as a life-time theme, when in 2010 shortly after launching her own personally designed on-line accessories retail business (Divagifts featuring Honeysuckle by Michelle), she agreed to serve as Chair of the Inauguration of the Prince George’s County Executive. Building on the organization she formed to run the Inauguration, Michelle began donating her time, resources and the inventory of her accessories business to conduct charitable work through Path to Greatness as its Founding Director.