Michael Wyrick
A member of the Washington Group Board of Directors since 2012, Michael served as Membership Director for two years prior to being elected Vice Chairman in 2017.
Michael has lived in and/or traveled to over 40 countries in Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. He has taught school in Damascus, Syria, the Bernese Oberland Alps of Switzerland and an Alaskan Inuit whaling village; backpacked through the highlands of Yemen, and driven a truck from Macedonia to Northern Iraq in support of an emergency water project for Kurdish families.
As a young Eagle Scout, Michael participated in and later led, expeditions to search for and recover the remains of World War II servicemen missing in action on jungle islands of Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides). In 2015, Michael revisited Vanuatu and the village that had supplied his team with guides 26 years earlier. Participating in a ceremonial feast as the only non-indigenous attendee, he witnessed and studied the funeral customs practiced by the Melanesian people. Michael returned to Vanuatu in 2016 as an interviewer and photographer on an EC flag expedition to the outer island of Maewo to investigate the rumored existence of female chiefs.
An international business developer by trade, Michael has been instrumental in the creation of several startup companies in varying regions and sectors such as strategic marketing, disaster recovery and construction. He has managed business and operations in multiple disaster recovery projects from the Haitian earthquake to Hurricane Sandy, founded a company that provided aerospace support to Turkey and helped establish a construction company in Qatar.
Michael received his BA in History, with an emphasis on the Modern Middle East, from the University of Arkansas. He also studied Arabic in both Yemen and Syria and studied German in Switzerland.