Individual | Inducted 2026
Michelle Wetzel’s advocacy for LGBTQI communities began after she left her path to become a Catholic nun, disillusioned by Vatican inaction during the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic and by injustice toward the Queer community. Identifying as a lesbian, she volunteered in 1989 at Chicago’s Bonaventure House, an AIDS hospice now operated as part of Alexian Brothers Housing & Health Alliance. After relocating to Holland, Michigan, she co-founded the AIDS Pastoral Care Network of the West Michigan Lakeshore. Under her leadership, the organization established a food pantry and buddy program, provided in-school HIV 101 education, and organized Holland’s first AIDS Walk.
Concerned about systemic discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWA), Wetzel attended DePaul University College of Law beginning in 1996 and clerked with the Legal Assistance Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Project, now Legal Aid Chicago. After graduating in 1999 and briefly working at Prairie State Legal Services, she returned to the Legal Assistance Foundation as a staff attorney. For a decade, she represented PLWA in disability, Social Security, employment, consumer, and eviction cases. The AIDS Foundation of Chicago recognized her housing advocacy with a leadership award in 2006. She also sued Bonaventure House over resident lockouts that violated HUD requirements.
In 2009, Wetzel became CEO of Bonaventure House. Through the Alexian Brothers AIDS Ministry, which operated sites in Lakeview and Waukegan, she oversaw the opening of Bettendorf Place on Chicago’s South Side. The facilities provided supportive housing, addiction support, and life-skills coaching for PLWA navigating addiction and mental health challenges.
From 2012 to 2019, Wetzel served as Howard Brown Health’s inaugural general counsel, defending the Broadway Youth Center against opposition before the City Zoning Commission and establishing a medical-legal partnership for patients with the AIDS Legal Counsel, now Council for Health Justice. Since 2019, she has served as general counsel at Planned Parenthood of Illinois, supporting its Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy program for transgender adults and minors. She has also spent nearly 30 years with the Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles, serving as its first board chair in the early 2000s and becoming the first lesbian drum major of the Lakeside Pride Freedom Band.