Michelle Nunn

Mary Michelle Nunn (born November 16, 1966) is an American philanthropic executive and politician.

He subsequently was elected to four terms as U.S. Senator from Georgia, serving from 1972 to 1997, and was chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1987 to 1995.

Nunn was born in Macon, Georgia, and initially lived in nearby Perry, Georgia, where her grandfather had been mayor and where the family had a 2400 acre farm.

When she was six, the family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, and then lived in the Washington, D.C. area in conjunction with her father's election to national office.

She credits her mother for having "really safeguarded a very normal and private environment for us."

She began volunteering in junior high school.

She went to the all-girls, private National Cathedral School in Washington, where she played on the basketball team and graduated in 1985.

She credits the massive charity rock concert Live Aid in July 1985, including the performance of U2 at it, with inspiring a belief in her that collective action could help change the world and that "Seeing this activism prompted me to imagine how I could be a part of creating change."

She attended the University of Virginia, majoring in history with a minor in religious studies, and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

She studied at the University of Oxford during 1987.

She also studied for four months in India during 1989.

She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1989.

After college, Nunn applied to join the Peace Corps and considered going to law school, but instead opted to join Hands On Atlanta.

Founded in 1989 by twelve young professionals, Hands On Atlanta was a non-profit dedicated to engaging volunteers, especially young businesspeople who would sign up for single days of service on a monthly basis.

Rapidly expanding and needing someone to help manage their efforts, they hired Nunn on a part-time basis as their executive director and only paid staffer (despite the title, she later described the position at first as "a glorified internship").

She had been an executive for the volunteer service organization since 1990, previously running the predecessor and member organizations Hands On Atlanta, City Cares, and HandsOn Network.

In May 1990, Nunn became full-time executive director, and by September 1990, Hands On Atlanta was coordinating 700 volunteers.

Nunn later said, "I had a real passion for community service and volunteerism, so I had a real passion for the work."

She also credited her upbringing, saying in 1992, "My father has influenced me through example. His own work in the public sphere, I'm sure, played a large part in my work in community service."

Nunn was an early practitioner in garnering corporate backing for such ventures.

Over the next twenty years, volunteers for Hands On Atlanta put in more than 6 million hours, and its founders credited Nunn with a significant role in helping it grow.

Similar organizations developed in other cities, and in 1992 they formed a national group under the name City Cares.

By 1995, the concept of appealing to young working people had proven successful, and Hands On Atlanta had a budget of $1 million, a paid staff of 17, and over 11,000 volunteers on its mailing list, 7,500 of whom participated in a Hands On Atlanta Day.

Nunn was a Kellogg National Fellow in the KNFP-15 group, c. 1995–1998.

At the end of 1998, City Cares of America relocated its headquarters from New York to Atlanta, and Nunn became interim executive director for it, while continuing on as executive director of Hands on Atlanta.

(She was sometimes referred to in the press without the 'interim' designation. ) Subsequently, Nunn returned to focusing on Hands On Atlanta, and staged a successful, multimillion-dollar capital campaign for a new headquarters building in that city.

She earned a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2001.

At a beach ceremony on Cumberland Island in Georgia on June 2, 2001, Nunn married Ron Martin Jr., who works in the real estate business.

She kept her own name after marriage; she later said that she was established professionally under that name and that "it really, frankly, didn't occur to me to change my name."

The couple live in the Inman Park neighborhood of Atlanta with their two children.

Martin is a stay-at-home father.

The family attends church in Atlanta and the children are being raised in the Methodist faith.

She was CEO of Points of Light, an American nonprofit organization, from 2007 to 2013, and is a member of its board of directors as of 2015.

Nunn, a member of the Democratic Party, was her party's nominee in the race for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat in 2014.

She is the daughter of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn.

Michelle Nunn is the daughter of Sam Nunn, a lawyer, farmer, and politician, and Colleen Ann (née O'Brien) Nunn, who worked for the U.S. State Department, and then briefly for the Central Intelligence Agency under foreign service cover, before becoming a stay-at-home mother.

She has a brother, Samuel Brian, known as Brian, two years younger.

The family is Methodist.

Two years after Michelle's birth, her father entered politics, being elected to the Georgia House of Representatives.

Since 2015 she has been president and CEO of CARE USA, the American national member of CARE International, the humanitarian aid and international development agency.