About Michelle St. John
Michelle didn’t have what you would consider a normal upbringing. Born on a thoroughbred racehorse farm started by her great-grandfather, Michelle was raised surrounded by the everyday struggles of farm life and a family business. Some families embrace and teach that love is paramount - on Bonita Farm the mantra, even emblazoned above the tack room door, was “everything cometh to he who waiteth so long as he who waiteth worketh like hell while he waiteth”. Hard work was the virtue to strive for and Michelle was mucking stalls, galloping racehorses before school and taking horses to the racetrack from a very young age.
Horse racing was her first introduction to the nuance and beauty of human stories. The backside at the track is full of melodramas and contradictions. The addict who hotwalks horses giving betting advice to the multi-millionaire horse owner, the immigrant jockey fighting to make rank on the track or the down on his luck trainer who knows just one horse could make or break his career and his bank. It was watching these people and the complexities of their lives that inspired Michelle to become a storyteller and producer.
However, life on the farm was often sheltered from the effects of the larger societal and humanitarian problems facing the world. When Michelle became a student at Washington and Lee University she became more aware of the need for storytelling in the news and decided journalism was the vocation where she could meld together her love of human stories with the need for honest and engaging reporting.
60 Minutes was the dream from the beginning and Michelle got her chance to enter the newsroom as a page after college. From here she worked her way up to becoming the youngest producer in the show’s history and eventually producing dozens of stories for the broadcast ranging from stories of the perils of war and the opiate epidemic to profiles of Hollywood stars and tech giants. Her time working with some of the most respected producers and correspondents at 60 Minutes was an incredible experience. It honed and sharpened her reporting and storytelling skills but the friendships and memories she made there over a decade are some of her most treasured.
In 2019 Michelle left 60 Minutes to join the team at The Nantucket Project, producing and directing short films while also leading production for their non-profit arm tnp academy. Her films there focus on human connection and what we can learn from each other.
Michelle now lives with her husband and three children in Bedford, NY. Horses have never stopped being her passion and she is an avid foxhunter who still loves to ride fast and work hard but has learned that her family and her love for them is now paramount in her life.
