Dr. Ambaye H.Michael was born on May 14, 1963, and raised in Addis Ababa. She completed her elementary, high school and university medical education in Addis Ababa. She started to work at Gambella General Hospital where she served for 2 years as a general practitioner. It was then she got exposed to the suffering of Ethiopian women and decided to be at the service to them. She joined the School of Post Graduate Studies and graduated in obstetric and

gynecology in 1993 and dedicated her medical practice to maternal health, specifically focused on the women suffering from obstetric fistula.

She worked at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital (AAFH) as fistula surgeon for more than a decade and a medical director for 6 years. There, she had a chance to travel to different regional hospitals within Ethiopia and other African countries to treat obstetric fistula patients and train other Obstetricians and Gynecologists on skill of fistula repair. In addition to this, to reduce the burden of long travel of fistula patients to Addis Ababa , she was able to start an outreach program that gave rise to establishment of 5 fistula centers all over the country. In 2006, she joined University of Leeds, International school of Public Health for Developing Countries, got a Masters degree in Public Health.

Since 2010 she joined a non-governmental organization, Women and Health Alliance (WAHA)- International, working on maternal health mainly on the quality care of obstetric fistula and its prevention and worked as a medical coordinator, consultant fistula surgeon and trainer in surgical management of obstetric fistula. At WAHA International, she initiated a one-year project, funded by the World Bank. The project enabled to educate and engage former fistula patients in community mobilization activities to promote safe motherhood practices: spacing between pregnancies, prevention of marriage and first pregnancy before the body is fully prepared for childbirth, and education for pregnant women to give birth at health facilities to avoid prolonged labor and the risks of developing obstetric fistula.

She had a fellowship for additional training in Family Planning and Maternal and Child Health (Mauritius), and Surgical Management of Female Stress Incontinence and Urodynamic assessment (Australia). She has trained obstetricians and gynecologists in different African countries in surgical management of obstetric fistula: Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Somaliland, Zimbabwe and in Afghanistan, where she also developed curriculum and teaching manual. She has presented posters and papers at different international conferences in the USA, Australia, Malaysia and Egypt.

She is currently working as the Executive Director at Hope of Light Civil Society Organization. Hope of Light provides medical service mainly on maternal health especially on surgical treatment of women with obstetric fistula and other pelvic floor disorders.

It also provides training on surgical skills for fistula repair and quality fistula care for qualified health professionals and for those who are on pre-service training to study different health profession and conduct outreach programs to identify obstetric fistula patients and prevention of obstetric fistula. She is actively engaged in emergency response interventions on conflict affected health facilities in the northern parts of the country.

She is a member of Ethiopian Medical Association, Ethiopian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and had served as the General Secretary of the International Society of Obstetric Fistula Surgeons for four years.

For the last 30 years, she has provided care to many women of Ethiopia with the highest professional integrity by practicing across different dimensions of health care.