Michele
Fiorelli-Rupar
More than two decades of experience supporting grieving individuals and families.
Michele has a diverse professional resume with credentials that make her a leader in the field of Death & Dying, Thanatology and Critical Illness in Children. She is a sought-after speaker and guest lecturer. Her experience is extensive and rich both in theory and in personal life experience. Her professional insight and experience make her a leading educator in the mortuary sciences and grief counseling profession.
Michele Fiorelli Rupar is a licensed funeral director and embalmer in the state of Georgia and a licensed funeral director in the state of Ohio. She has served as a licensed professional in the death care profession for 19 years. She is certified through the American Institute of Health Care Professionals as a grief counselor. She holds a master’s degree in The Science of Psychology, a bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a concentration in Cultural Diversity.
In 1999, she was the Third-Place winner of The North Central Sociological Association Undergraduate Student Paper Competition for a controversial paper on “Same-Sex Domestic violence: Social and Political Issues.” Michele is a former Patient Advocate of the North East Ohio Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America and served as their Team-In-Training Honorary Patient Ambassador from 1993-1997.
She is a sought-after speaker and has delivered keynote and motivational speeches at events hosted in Chicago, Illinois, Albuquerque, New Mexico, San Diego, California and Anchorage, Alaska.
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She has guest lectured at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, to medical professionals on “Parenting a Child with Critical Illness” and “Death & Dying from a Parent’s Perspective.”
She served on the Board of University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Family Faculty (Cleveland, OH) from 1993 – 1998, where she advised and advocated for families with critically ill children.
Michele is a mother of four grown children, and a grandmother of eight.
I learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou