Carolyn Cassin
Carolyn Cassin is a highly-regarded turnaround and operations expert, an accomplished healthcare entrepreneur, and is considered a national icon in end of life care.
Over her thirty year career, Carolyn has started and grown two companies, and has been brought in to transform and turn around three more. Her professional successes include turning around a failing hospice organization in southeast Michigan and building it into the nation’s largest and best run hospices. She led the first venture capital backed hospice company in the US, Vistacare, which became a publicly traded company in 2005 and sold in 2008.
In 2009, she accepted the leadership of Michigan Women’s Foundation now Michigan Women’s Forward (MWF), Michigan’s only public statewide organization dedicated to helping women and girls achieve economic self-sufficiency and advancing equality. Carolyn created an innovative, strategic direction for the Foundation through the development of a Microloan Fund for women owned and managed businesses in Michigan. Her leadership of the Foundation has resulted in exponential growth, financial stability, innovative programming and measurable results focused on support of high impact endeavors for Michigan’s women and girls. Under Carolyn’s leadership, MWF has increased its size tenfold since 2008 and has funded 93 microloans to women entrepreneurs. Also, the organization’s Enough SAID (Sexual Assault in Detroit) campaign has helped test and eliminate over 10,000 rape evidence kits in the Detroit Police Department's backlog.
In 2010 Carolyn and a group of 28 other Michigan women founded BELLE Capital/Michigan, of which she is the General Partner. Under her leadership, Michigan’s first female venture fund was created to invest in women owned companies in the state and other underserved communities in the US. The Fund has made 14 investments with two successful exits to date and is transforming the entrepreneurial ecosystem for women in Michigan.
In January 2018 Carolyn founded BELLE Michigan Impact Fund, a $20 million impact investment fund to make early stage investments in high-growth, women- owned businesses. To date the fund has made three investments and has 47 Limited Partners.
Honors:
1993 first awardee of “Heart of Hospice Award”, National Hospice Organization
1994 “Best Managed Non-Profit” award, Crain’s Detroit Business
1997 “Detroit’s 100 Most Influential Women,”, Crain’s Detroit Business
2006 “Circle of Life” award for innovation, American Hospital Association’s Business
2006 “Founder’s Award”, National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization
2009, Crain’s Business Detroit named her a “Woman to Watch,”
2013 “Network’s Wonder Woman” Awardee, Women Official’s
2016 “Michigan’s 100 Most Influential Women, Crain’s Detroit Business
Carolyn earned her Master of Public Administration degree from Western Michigan University, her BA from Miami University, and the esteemed three-year National Leadership Fellowship, from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
