A Single Vision
I am always impressed with Melissa’s knack for synthesizing a lot of competing view points into a single vision.
Director of UX & Behavioral Research at WWT
Clarity around the ‘why’
Melissa is incredibly dedicated to driving positive action. That manifests in understanding and providing clarity around the ‘why’ of the ask, uncovering purpose and values behind the decisions.
Chief Digital Advisor at WWT
Expertise & Domain Focus
Product Lifecycle Leadership
Driving products from concept through launch, iteration, and long-term improvement.
User-Centered Design
Translating user needs into products that resonate with target audiences.
Payments & Financial Strategy
Experience in developing payment strategies and ensuring regulatory compliance in fintech solutions.
Executive-Level Communication
Developing and presenting high-impact strategies, insights, proposals, and narratives for senior leadership.
Engineering & Technology Partnership
Ensuring product direction aligns with technical feasibility and architectural standards.
Compliance & Verification Solutions
Delivering authentication, age/ID verification, and regulatory-aligned product initiatives.
Market & Strategy Adaptability
Adjusting product direction to meet evolving customer, industry, and regulatory demands.
Core Skills & Leadership Competencies
Product Strategy & Roadmapping
Defining product vision, setting measurable goals, and building clear executable roadmaps.
User Research & Experience Design
Conducting research, synthesizing insights, and translating findings into actionable product direction.
Agile Delivery Expertise
Skilled in Scrum, SAFe, and Kanban practices to drive efficient execution and cross-team alignment.
Cross-Functional Leadership
Partnering effectively with engineering, design, compliance, legal, and business stakeholders.
Regulatory & Risk Awareness
Navigating constraints and ensuring product decisions meet necessary regulatory and quality standards.
Stakeholder Communication
Excellent verbal and written communication skills for aligning stakeholder expectations and presenting strategies.
Data Analysis & Strategy
Leveraging data to inform product decisions, identify opportunities, and measure product success.
Problem-solving & Decision-Making
Skilled in addressing complex product challenges with effective solutions.
Ramp-Up Speed
Just want to say that most of the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks has been down to Melissa. The [technical teams] have been very impressed with her understanding of not just the [Detailed Level Design], but the importance of how the designers create their DLDs…
Well done Melissa, very impressive.Program Manager at Telecom Client
Building Trust
Melissa […] promotes a high level of safety in the office. Because of her relationships with others, she is able to provide and receive feedback, even when it is not complimentary (when it’s constructive criticism). She trusts her team to get the job done, and is able to hold team members accountable when things are slipping.
Quality Engineer at WWT
Lead Product Manager
Ciklum
London, UK (Remote)
Sep 2023 – Jul 2025
- Conducted in-depth market, sentiment, competitor, user research and insight synthesis across 15+ global clients in healthcare, retail, tech, and education.
- Translated insights into actionable strategies and AI use cases, aligning leadership on feasibility and timing.
- Scoped and authored 40+ proposals outlining rationale, timelines, resourcing, and budget models, presenting multiple options with clear trade-offs to align executives on value and feasibility.
Notable Engagement | Global Petcare Brand
- Led cross-functional discovery for internal sales tool using Jobs-to-Be-Done, usage analytics, and user interviews.
- Introduced and established adoption of GenAI tools for concept validation, synthesis, and prototyping, accelerating time-to-insight and reducing discovery time by 40-60%.
- Reprioritized roadmap to accelerate anomaly detection by 5 years, closing sales visibility gaps.
- Delivered the tool’s first release with predictive anomaly detection and dashboarding, projected to reduce analysis time by 4 hours/week and increase anomaly awareness by 2–4 weeks, enabling early sales interventions and improved forecasting accuracy.
Director of Product
Tolam Earth
St. Louis, MO (Remote)
Apr 2022 – May 2023
- Shaped end-to-end strategy for Web3 offset marketplace; launched MVP in 4 months, securing $2.5M contract.
- Scaled team from 2 to 30+ members across three cross-functional squads, enabling rapid MVP delivery.
- Owned roadmap and backlog for the overall platform while directly running the AI squad, overseeing sprint planning, backlog prioritization, and ceremonies.
- Partnered with data engineers to design ML pipelines and workflows, enabling predictive pricing feature.
- Negotiated service contracts, SLAs, and integration protocols to ensure reliability and scalability.
- Selected compliant payments vendor from 50+ options, aligning with regulatory requirements and coordinating with engineering and legal.
- Defined KPIs to measure platform scalability and reliability (e.g. transfer of 100K offsets for beta release).
Manager of Product
World Wide Technology
St. Louis, MO (Remote)
Feb 2020 – Apr 2022
- Scaled product org by 2x; hired 20+ top performers and mentored 13 direct reports.
- Directed team to deliver 40+ digital products over two years across telecom, retail, media, and internal tools.
- Acted as escalation point for blockers; resolved issues to minimize impact on timelines.
- Optimized hiring, onboarding, and mentoring frameworks, enabling the product org to rapidly scale while halving new-hire time-to-productivity (8 to 4 weeks).
Lead Product Owner
World Wide Technology
Denver, CO (Hybrid)
Feb 2016 – Feb 2020
- Owned both product strategy and daily delivery for enterprise clients in retail, telecom, QSR, and internal IT.
- Defined and prioritized features, user stories, and APIs to ensure alignment with business goals and technical feasibility.
- Facilitated Agile ceremonies, velocity tracking, and throughput optimization to keep delivery predictable.
- Partnered with engineering and design to shape workflows, wireframes, ontologies, and architecture.
- Used delivery metrics and product analytics to communicate trade-offs and align executives, delivery teams, and legal/finance partners under high-pressure timelines; avoided $300K+ in build costs by recommending a refined low-code solution over custom development in one case.
- Coached and trained employees and clients on Agile principles and tools; fluent in Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and Waterfall, tailoring frameworks to fit team maturity and organizational goals; in once instance boostingthroughput by 40% at a national grocer through Lean and Agile practices.
- Managed discovery for a fast-food loyalty program; identified major UX issue from sentiment analysis of SaaS platform and persuaded vendor to improve usability.
Senior Software Quality Engineer
Baxter International
Englewood, CO
Feb 2006 – Feb 2016
- Led QA for a Class II medical device, managing test strategy, FDA compliance, and offshore teams.
- Guided localization initiatives to support international expansion.
- Built QA outsourcing model to reduce costs and improve scalability.
- Reduced ramp-up time by 50% through structured onboarding and test traceability improvements.
Education
Bachelor of Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO
2005
Certifications
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Certified
