Staff

Helen Johnson is president of the Michigan Municipal League Foundation. Prior to coming to the League, she founded CityLove Collaborative to combine her passion for cities, creativity, and collaboration with a persistent desire to help others achieve their goals. For 20+ years, including as the VP at the Quicken Loans Community Fund, as a Program Officer for the Kresge Foundation, and Co-Founder of CreateHere, Helen built and implemented bold, entrepreneurial and innovative nonprofit and philanthropic work that improves the quality of life for culturally and economically diverse community residents, nurtures place-based opportunity, and drives equitable impact. Solutions-oriented and entrepreneurial, Helen’s experience also includes the successful development of organizational strategy, marketing and communications, cross-sector initiatives and public/private partnerships. Her work has been featured in FastCompany, ModelD, Media, Garden and Gun, to name a few.

Helen lives in Oakland County, MI. She is the proud mom of Emma and William, is married to an amazing guy named Bill, and loves making sourdough bread and painting in her free time.

Grace A Carey is the Michigan Municipal League Foundation’s Program Officer. She is trained as a Cultural Anthropologist with areas of expertise in Political-Legal Anthropology, Placemaking, and Community Studies with a PhD from Princeton University and a BA from University of Michigan-Flint. Between 2015-2021, Grace researched a privately owned and privately governed town in Florida with social and financial ties to Michigan, culminating in her published dissertation The Art of Building Paradise: How a Catholic Community Experiences the Utopic in Everyday Life. Her research and experience as an anthropologist has given her the opportunity to study and engage with the incredible human capacity for making community and place across the US and Scandinavia; experience that she hopes will continue to grow here at home in Michigan. Grace is deeply passionate about issues of democracy and equitable placemaking and she is excited to be a part of the community wealth building mission at the Michigan Municipal League Foundation.

Rachel Skylis serves as a Program Manager with the Michigan Municipal League Foundation. Rachel graduated with a B.A. in public policy from James Madison College at Michigan State University. Soon after graduating she joined the non-profit sector where she saw policy’s impact on everyday life for all sorts of Michiganders. In the past ten years Rachel has served a variety of missions—from urban forestry and park access to mental health stigma to housing needs—and along the way she has seen just how important it is to support Michigan communities. She is thrilled to bring this experience to the League where she helps communities build community wealth and leverage support to make local change. She spends her free time reading, baking, and volunteering with the City of Ann Arbor on its Parks Advisory Commission.

Caileen Ayers serves as Foundation Assistant for the Michigan Municipal League Foundation. Originally from Michigan, Caileen went to college in Savannah, Georgia where she received her B.A. in Professional Communications. Shortly after, she decided to pursue a career in nonprofit work and became a consultant at Phi Mu Foundation. Later, she joined the AmeriCorps VISTA program and was Volunteer Coordination Specialist for a Community Action agency.  This experience reignited a love of amplifying voices and driving positive change in local communities.

She is happy to be back in her hometown and working with the Michigan Municipal League Foundation to build community wealth in some of the areas she loves the most.

Caileen lives in Wayne County, MI. She spends much of her free time reading and hiking, usually with her oversized lap dog Remy by her side.