About Mel
Hi! I’m Melissa — a digital strategist, communications specialist, and enthusiastic multi-hyphenate who lives at the intersection of storytelling, technology, and community.
By day I’m the Digital and Visual Strategy Manager at Cornell Cooperative Extension and an MPS student in Global Development researching redundancies in critical and crisis communication systems. I care deeply about user-centered digital design, accessible research communication, and helping mission-driven organizations translate complex work into usable, human-centered experiences. I've earned certificates in Project Management and UX Design from Cornell and a B.A. in English from Indiana University — proof that the English-major-turned-tech-strategist pipeline is very real.
Outside of work my life gets delightfully messy. I live in upstate New York with my partner and our dogs, and you can usually find us hiking, camping, or fishing somewhere nearby. I brew mead and kombucha, cook and bake obsessively, and tinker with hands-on crafts — knitting, crochet, sewing, and leatherwork — when I need quiet focus. I love thrifting and collecting vintage or handmade treasures. I practice yoga and mindfulness. I'm an herbalist and wildcrafter. And tend to approach most things — whether it’s crafting a paragraph or blending a tincture — with curiosity and care.
I’m also into slightly stranger hobbies: lock-picking (safely and legally of course!), slingshots, and once I even tried taxidermy. On more social nights, I’ll be at a concert or singing karaoke. And yes — I still find time to coach and compete in archery and play the autoharp (plus lap harp, fiddle, singing saw, and shruti box). Across all of it, I try to bring the same values: attention, creativity, and a genuine love for learning how things — and people — work.