Melanie Wise (she/her)

Founder & Managing Director

A builder at heart, Melanie has dedicated her career to service. She has been using her skills to help mission-driven organizations grow for more than 15 years.

Throughout her career, she has been blessed to work with amazing colleagues and clients from around the world in support of students in the Bay Area, mothers and newborns in East Africa, readers on all continents, and the beautiful but fragile natural spaces of California. Her key focus areas are education, global health, arts, and the environment.

As a consultant, Melanie has had the honor of working with organizations big and small (from nonprofit and government to tech) and has coached or taught hundreds of professionals across disciplines.

Melanie approaches her work with cultural humility and practices diversity, belonging, equity, and inclusion (DBEI) with both her collaborators and clients. She’s found that leading with love gets great results.

Calling the San Francisco Bay Area home, Melanie loves to spend her free time walking her Formosan Mountain Dog Fuji, swimming, listening to live music, and spending time with family and friends.

Photos of Melanie

Skills

  • Developing goals-based marketing and communications strategies to support organizational missions

  • Supporting organizational development and change management to establish strong foundations for communications

  • Supporting teams through transition by drawing on years as an educator and coach

  • Developing and managing brands that increase trust and visibility

  • Building systems that support globally dispersed teams who work to the highest standards 

  • Leveraging digital marketing, earned media, and thought leadership to get the important stories told

  • Stewarding donors, funders, stakeholders, and customers with thoughtfu,l beautifully designed collateral –including websites, digital campaigns, brochures, one-pagers, proposals, reports, impact stories and more.

  • Using data to guide tactics by consistently testing, measuring, analyzing, and refining

Recent Experience

  • Principal, Melanie Wise Communications (formerly WiseExposition) 2004 - present

  • Senior Director, Global Marketing & Communications – Worldreader 2019-2023

  • Strategic Communications Director - East Africa Preterm Birth Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco 2016-2018

  • Chief Communications Officer - Breakthrough Collaborative 2014-2016

Related Experience

  • Board Member – Leap Arts & Education

  • Board Vice President - Chooda

  • Communications Curriculum Designer & Instructor – UC Berkeley Extension

  • Senior Lecturer Emerita- San Francisco State University

Academic Background

  • Master of Arts in English Literature (with a certificate in teaching writing) – San Francisco State University

  • Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual arts – Virginia Commonwealth University (VCUarts)