Risley was born and raised in Clawson, Michigan, before spending her teenage years in Troy, Michigan. She graduated from Bishop Foley High School and went on to graduate from Michigan State University with a degree in Telecommunications and minors in English and Advertising. She spent a number of years in Hollywood for such companies as Disney, Amblin and Mattel. While Vice President of Production for Marvel's animation unit she was recruited by SEGA of America to build a consumer products and entertainment division. At that time, SEGA was at less than 4% market share. The Consumer Products division was an incredible team that turned Sonic the Hedgehog until a billion dollar consumer products brand. The team also worked with two top animation facilities and created two Sonic animated series simultaneously. Both shows, the Network series and the syndication series were #1 hits. Creating two simultaneous hit shows on the same character at the same time, has not been done since. Michealene left SEGA to start her own for profit and not for profit company. She has continued to work with top athletes and sports companies after SEGA SPORTS and was hired by Nike to entertain building a gaming division for Nike or licensing out their roster of athletes to the video game sector. She recommended to Nike that they stick to their core business and license out those characters. Within her new company, Fresh Water Spigot, she took Nike's athletes out to the technology sector for licensing. This included Ronaldo, Brazil Soccer and Tiger Woods. The Tiger Woods/ Electronic Arts deal was the largest deal in the history of the video game sector at that time.
Career
Risley's non profit was established as Freshwater Haven. The focus of that non profit was to use medial to create social change. Within this non profit, Risley is noted for her work as the writer, producer and director for the film Tapestries of Hope, which follows social activist Betty Makoni in her efforts to help sexually abused young women in Zimbabwe through her foundation the Girl Child Network. Risley was imprisoned and then deported to South Africa by the Zimbabwean government for the footage she shot during her time with Makoni and the Girl Child Network. After being safely returned to the United States, Risley became a large part of the push for the passing of the International Violence Against Women Act by creating grassroots efforts with over 45 other human rights groups. The film premiered in September 2010 in over 105 theaters nationwide. In 2000, Risley was appointed as the VP of Production, Development and Consumer products for Marvel Comics. In 2003, she founded Fresh Water Haven, a 501 organization that writes, produces, develops and brings to market films, documentaries and books with the goal of raising awareness about global issues that are in need of reform. A frequent Huffington Post editorial writer, Risley is a noted Human Rights Speaker. In 2003, Risley wrote, directed and produced Flashcards, a short film on child sexual abuse which won numerous awards and aired on PBS nationwide. Risley co-authored the best-selling book This Is Not the Life I Ordered, alongside Deborah Collins Stephens, Jan Yanehiro, and Jackie Speier, which has sold over 50,000 copies. After Running Marvels animation unit Michealene was recruited by Sega of America to build a licensing and Entertainment division from scratch. As Senior Director of Entertainment/Consumer Products at SEGA of America, she recruited and built a small group in Beverly Hills, California and eventually moved the whole team up to Sega headquarters in Northern California---where she became fascinated with the tech world and has never left Silicon Valley. In 2006, Risley founded Fresh Water Spigot, a licensing and creative services agency specializing in consumer products categories; she also conceived, developed, and launched the first Adidas-branded maternity product line, The Power of Two, LLC. Michealene was also Vice President of Games at Zynga, a San Francisco-based mobile games company.. She has been a CEO of a number of tech start-ups in entertainment sector. In 2019 a revised version of "This is not the life I ordered: was released. Michealene is currently building a new entertainment company, called AMMA productions and two new start ups, Shield Guard Solutions and Apex Medical Group deliver PPE product in the United States to alleviate the spread of COVID-19.
Activism
As an passionate activist on issues of rape, abuse and human trafficking. Miss Risley has been thrown in prison in Zimbabwe, received death attempts and in 2019 while writing a version of the Larry Nassar story for television and hosting a Human trafficking event through Operation Big Sister, her LYFT vehicle was hijacked by one of the 341 gangs that do human trafficking. She had to flee the area and recover from PTSD. She is no longer working at the grass roots level on these issues.
