Who is Michelle Bauge
Michelle Bauge is a community wellbeing leader, author, and Sports Development Co-ordinator with Glasgow Life, recognized for her human-centered approach to leadership rooted in empathy, inclusion, and connection. With a career spanning youth development, community health, and cancer recovery initiatives, she supports volunteers, delivers inclusive health walk programs across the city, and serves as a mentor and assessor within Coach Core, helping young people build confidence and agency as they transition toward employment. As the author of A Heart Full of Love and A Heart Full of Empathy, Michelle also extends her impact through storytelling, using her voice to champion compassion, belonging, and the belief that every individual is more than a single chapter of their story.
The Quiet Strength of Leading With Love
For Michelle Bauge, leadership has never been about titles, authority, or recognition. It has always begun with something far simpler and far more demanding: presence. The willingness to listen deeply. The courage to meet people where they are, without judgment. And the belief that empathy, when practiced consistently, can change the trajectory of a life.
Michelle’s work across youth development, cancer recovery, and community wellbeing is grounded in a truth she has lived rather than learned. People do not need to be fixed; they need to be seen. Whether supporting young people navigating the space between education and employment, or individuals rebuilding their relationship with their bodies after cancer, Michelle leads with a steady conviction that compassion is not a soft skill. It is the foundation of lasting change.
Values That Preceded Language
Long before Michelle could articulate her philosophy, it was already shaping her choices. Empathy, social justice, and human connection were not adopted later in life. They were intrinsic. Raised among people from many walks of life, and shaped by both personal challenges and profound relationships, Michelle learned early that resilience is rarely loud. More often, it is quiet, relational, and sustained by hope.
Her academic path into sports studies and coaching provided technical structure, but it was her lived experience that defined her direction. From her earliest professional roles supporting children in residential care, Michelle understood that no two people carry the same story. Progress, she learned, is never linear, and leadership must be flexible enough to honor that.
Influenced by thinkers such as Brené Brown, Father Gregory Boyle, Viktor Frankl, and Edith Eger, Michelle absorbed lessons on vulnerability, meaning, and compassion. These were not abstract ideas, but practical tools for living and serving well. These influences would later surface not only in her work, but in her writing.
A Career Built Around Human Potential
Michelle’s professional journey reflects consistency of purpose rather than a pursuit of status. As a Sports Development Co-ordinator with Glasgow Life, her central role focuses on supporting volunteers and supporting overseeing the delivery of health walks across the city, ensuring inclusive, accessible opportunities for physical activity within local communities.
Under Michelle’s guidance, support is never one size fits all. Schedules adapt. Expectations shift. Barriers, whether perceived or structural, are addressed collaboratively.
Alongside this core responsibility, Michelle also serves as a mentor and assessor within Coach Core, a program designed to bridge the gap between school and employment for young people. While she previously worked full time on the initiative, her current involvement allows her to contribute where her impact is most meaningful: supporting personal development. Her focus extends beyond skills acquisition to confidence, self-belief, and agency, helping young people envision possibilities beyond their current circumstances.
During her time in the role of Move More Development Officer, Michelle managed teams, partnerships, budgets, and reporting requirements, while creating environments that empowered individuals to reconnect with their bodies and rebuild confidence in their wellbeing. The experience further shaped her belief that sustainable change begins when people feel supported as whole individuals, not defined by diagnosis or limitation.
Leadership Through Listening
Michelle’s leadership style is defined less by direction and more by invitation. She does not arrive with answers. She arrives with questions. Listening, for her, is not passive. It is an active, disciplined practice that builds trust and opens space for transformation.
This approach has not gone unnoticed.
As one colleague reflected, “Michelle is a breath of fresh air, honest, hard-working, professional, and a pleasure to work with.”
The sentiment captures what many experience in her presence: a steadiness that allows others to feel safe enough to grow.
During lockdown, Michelle deepened her commitment to personal leadership through a daily morning practice of movement, breathwork, meditation, and intention-setting. This routine, she says, does not offer perfection. It offers alignment. A way to return, again and again, to who she wants to be and how she wants to serve.
For Michelle, leadership is inseparable from integrity. There is no division between the personal and the professional. Showing up fully, even on difficult days, is part of the work.
Storytelling as Service: Writing From the Inside Out
Michelle’s expansion into authorship was not strategic. It was, in her words, an invitation. Through A Heart Full of Love and A Heart Full of Empathy, she discovered a way to extend compassion beyond programs and policies and into the quiet spaces where people often feel most alone.
Writing became a means of connection. A way to remind readers, especially children and young people, that they are more than their circumstances, more than their worst moment, and more than a single chapter of their story. Her words are not prescriptive. They are reassuring. They do not claim authority. They offer companionship.
Michelle is candid about her journey as a writer. She does not position herself as having “made it,” but as someone who said yes despite fear. Someone who believed that honesty, offered with care, could be enough.
Communities That Belong
Looking ahead, Michelle envisions community wellbeing rooted in belonging. Spaces where conversations about identity, body image, purpose, and self-worth are not avoided, but welcomed. Where young people, in particular, feel seen not as problems to be solved, but as leaders already in formation.
Her hope is that her work continues to reach those most often overlooked. These include communities experiencing deprivation, isolation, or disconnection. She believes deeply in early intervention, lived-experience leadership, and investment in people who understand their communities from the inside.
At the heart of her philosophy is a simple, powerful truth: you are the whole story. Not your success. Not your failure. Not the chapter others choose to read. Life, Michelle believes, is an evolving narrative, and change begins when we are willing to listen more closely to one another.
Editorial Note
Michelle Bauge’s journey reminds us that leadership does not always announce itself. Sometimes, it sits quietly beside someone, listens without interruption, and believes in possibilities not yet visible. In a world increasingly driven by speed and certainty, her work offers a different model. One rooted in patience, empathy, and human connection.
For leaders, practitioners, and communities alike, her story poses an essential question: What might change if we chose to lead with the heart?
