Michelle Vruwink is founder and Director of Arroyo Research Services. Vruwink has extensive experience in public sector health policy leadership, private sector health policy consulting, community based health and social services, and education program development and evaluation. Her experience includes program evaluation and work on school health policy and education funding with clients including universities, school districts, and state education agencies. She led studies of student outcomes produced by the Walden University Online Master of Arts in Nursing program, and was a project lead on the Texas Dropout Recovery Pilot Program evaluation, Virginia Enhancing Education Through Technology/ARRA program, and Ohio Statewide Interactive Video Distance Learning Project. She also led development of the Franklin School of Innovation, a locally developed nonprofit public charter school, where she served as the founding Board Chair and lead organizer. In addition to project work, Vruwink is responsible for business development, contract negotiations, and firm-wide compliance, bringing our projects the political insight and bureaucratic understanding gained from her years in New York City government.

Prior to ARS, Vruwink was Senior Consultant for Pacific Health Policy Group, where her clients included Wellpoint Health Networks, California Health Care Foundation, Sierra Health Services, and the states of Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia and Oklahoma. Vruwink was Acting Director of the Mayor’s Office of Medicaid Managed Care for the City of New York, where she managed a staff of 15 directing the largest program of its kind in the country. As a senior member of the Mayor’s Office of Health Policy, she directed the city’s Domestic Violence Prevention campaign. Vruwink also worked with HIV CARE Services for the Medical and Health Research Association of New York City overseeing community based organizations funded through the Ryan White Comprehensive Aids Resources Emergency Act. She started her career as “special assistant” to the director of Project Hospitality, a truly grassroots homeless services organization in New York City, where her duties included everything from shifts at the overnight men’s shelter to writing grants. She was with Project Hospitality during a phenomenal period of growth and as Director of Resource Development played a key role in procuring millions of dollars in federal and state funds for innovative multi-service program models. Vruwink received a Masters in Public Policy from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.