Michael Elwell is a designer, educator, inventor, and entrepreneur with more than two decades of experience turning ideas into market-ready products and helping organizations evolve through design and strategy. He is currently the Founder of Elwell Consulting, where he partners with manufacturing and product-driven businesses to modernize operations, strengthen leadership, and accelerate growth through innovation.

Previously, Michael served as Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Richmond Institute for Design + Innovation at Western Michigan University. He was also a professor at the University of Notre Dame from 2011-2017.

Michael earned his BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Notre Dame, where he received the 2005 IDSA Merit Award and third place in the International Housewares Association Student Design Competition. His winning concept, a prescription pill container opener and label magnifier, was licensed to Jokari, Inc. as the Magnifying Medi-Grip, and later recognized as a Design Defined Honoree (2009) and Best in Category winner at the Housewares Design Awards (2010).

He went on to earn his MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a Petullo Fellowship, where his thesis, a safer crib concept, addressed infant suffocation risks through material innovation. While there, his teaching was recognized with the 2011 Teaching Excellence Award, and his students earned top honors in major international design competitions.

Michael’s professional background spans corporate (Radio Flyer, Coachmen), consultancy (Process 4), entrepreneurial (Benefactory and Elwell Consulting), and academia (University of Notre Dame, Western Michigan University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.)