Michelle W. Thornhill

Michelle W. Thornhill is an end-of-life doula, grief specialist, and Founder & CEO of Legacy & Hope, LLC, offering systems-based support around grief, illness, dying, and bereavement nationally and internationally. With roots in funeral service since 1985 and companioning the dying since 2010, she brings decades of experience to her work. Michelle teaches in the University of Vermont’s End-of-Life Doula and Grief & Bereavement Certificate programs. She is Vice President of the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA), Chair of its DEIJ Committee, and a Board member of New Jersey Death with Dignity. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Historic Eden Cemetery—the nation’s oldest continuously operating African American cemetery in the North—where she advances ethical remembrance and community heritage connected to generations of Philadelphia leadership. Michelle serves on the Advisory Board of Girls Leading Africa and the Advisory Council of Greater Hope Medical Center. She is a contributing author to Living Toward Justice: A Time Capsule (New Village Press, 2025) and author of The Founders of Freedom’s City: 30 of Philadelphia’s Pioneering African Americans (March 2026). Her work has been featured in TIME, CNN, HuffPost, WHYY PBS/NPR, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. When she’s not working, she enjoys reading, learning sign language, and salsa dancing