Michelle Morales

Michelle Morales died on Thursday 22 October 2026 of complications from metastatic breast cancer, her family announced. She was 51. She had stepped away from Woods Fund Chicago in September 2026 because of her health, and Mia Henry had been serving as interim president.

The Chicago Board of Education issued a statement of mourning on 23 October, and tributes came from Mayor Brandon Johnson, City Clerk Anna Valencia, Ald. Jessie Fuentes, Leadership Greater Chicago, and the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School. Block Club Chicago published an obituary on 28 October.

She was survived by her parents Martha and Isidro, her husband Scott, her son Xavier, her stepchildren Timothy and Alyssa, her siblings Christy and Pito, and nieces and nephews. A private ceremony was arranged at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture on West Division Street, followed by a public opportunity to pay respects, with outdoor seating and a livestream for the public.

Michelle Morales was born in Yonkers, New York, to Martha and Isidro Morales, who had migrated from Puerto Rico. Her father's military service meant the family moved often during her childhood. She later described her core values as stemming from her experience as a first-generation, US-born Puerto Rican woman from a working-class background.

In 1993 she moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University, where she studied Latin American and Latino studies. At DePaul she became involved in the defense committee for José Solís Jordán, a Puerto Rican educator facing federal charges, and served as the committee's treasurer. It was the start of her life as an organizer. She later earned a master's degree in special education from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2002 and a master's degree in educational leadership from Northeastern Illinois University.

In 1997, at the age of 21, Morales began teaching science at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, an alternative school in Humboldt Park. She counselled students, rose to assistant principal and co-director, and later served on the school's board.

She then became dean of the adult education program at Malcolm X College and associate director of the Alternative Schools Network. In September 2015 she was named Chicago executive director of Mikva Challenge, the youth civic engagement organization, where she expanded its youth councils from four to seven and extended its civics programs to Aurora and Waukegan.

In September 2019 Woods Fund Chicago named her its president, the first Latina to lead the foundation, and she took up the post in November 2019, succeeding Grace Hou. Woods Fund supports community groups that organize for racial and economic justice. Soon after she arrived the foundation faced the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 uprisings, which it used to re-examine its grant making and internal practices around racial equity.

In early 2023 she co-chaired Mayor Brandon Johnson's transition team, and in July 2023 Johnson appointed her to the Chicago Board of Education, where she served until October 2024. She was also vice chair of the board of trustees of Northeastern Illinois University.

Throughout her career she was an organizer in Chicago's Puerto Rican community. She led the Chicago chapter of the National Boricua Human Rights Network and co-coordinated the national campaign to free Puerto Rican political prisoners. She watched eleven of them go free in 1999, corresponded with Carlos Alberto Torres and Oscar López Rivera in the years that followed, and saw Torres released in 2010 and López Rivera's sentence commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017. Colleagues also credited her with a role in the campaign to end the US military presence on Vieques.

Morales was married for more than 20 years to Scott Greene. She was the mother of Xavier and stepmother to Timothy and Alyssa, and she lived in the Washington Heights neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. After a period of remission the cancer returned in 2021 and metastasized, and she went through surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and other treatment while continuing to work. She wrote publicly about how living with metastatic cancer had shaped her thinking about leadership. Her husband said she rarely wrote speeches down and always spoke from the heart.

Morales was remembered as a mentor to a generation of Chicago organizers. Ald. Jessie Fuentes, who met her at 16 after being expelled from a CPS school, said Morales changed her life. Mia Henry said her moral compass was unwavering, with justice for the people as her North Star.

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School and the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center announced a scholarship in her name for a student who reflects her love of learning, commitment to community and pursuit of justice.