Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Debra Michals received her BS magna cum laude from Boston University (1984) and her Ph.D. from New York University (2002). She is an instructor of women’s history and women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, where in 2008 she also served as acting chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. In 2013, Debra co-authored a permanent exhibit for the National Women’s History Museum entitled “From Ideas to Independence: A Century of Entrepreneurial Women” (http://entrepreneurs.nwhm.org/ ). She is currently completing a book on the emergence of women entrepreneurs and the growing number of female breadwinners since World War II, and she has also begun research for a book about gender and modern fatherhood. Debra has been a visiting scholar to Northeastern University (2003), and served as the Acting Associate Director of Women's Studies at New York University (1994-1996), where she helped obtain and administer a Ford Foundation Grant in Women's and Area Studies and earned the university's President's Leadership Service Award. She has contributed to several anthologies, including Sisterhood Is Forever (2003), Image Nation: American Countercultures in the 1960s and '70s (2002); and Reading Women's Lives (2003), as well as the encyclopedia Notable American Women (2004). Debra has served as a consultant/editor for The History Channel and has written for the History Channel Magazine. She was the content director for The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future (1998-2000), a consultant to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust, and currently sits on the advisory board for the International Museum of Women. In addition to her own research, Debra is a frequent editor and advisor for scholarly books and pedagogical materials in U.S. history.
