The insights that Melissa brought to our organization have been a fundamentally transformational learning for us – it’s changed how we operate, how we communicate, and has propelled us to another level of success.

John Trimble

Former CEO, C&S Companies

Melissa has been a fabulous asset to Engineers for a Sustainable World’s leadership. Her training on architecture of purpose and on developing a self-managed team structure have helped remove barriers to our teams’ collaboration and productivity. She took the time to understand us and our needs and guide us through a process, rather than dictating outcomes.

Kyle Gracey

AI risk, Biosecurity & Climate Researcher | Communications Professional | Manager | Board Chair,

During 2007-2009 I have worked with Melissa as part of an IBM strategy initiative on Energy & Environment. Melissa took a very early interest in this, although it was not directly in her day job and showed exceptional leadership in developing the Green Sigma programme and the Green Sigma Alliance as vehicle for bringing improvements in energy efficiency and GHG reductions to IBM’s clients.

At that time industry was only just beginning to recognise the need to apply IT to mitigating the impacts of climate change. Building on that early insight, she and others assembled the “Green Army” of climate-aware leaders within IBM’s worldwide technical community. They explored intersection between IT and climate change and from this developed IBM’s earliest corporate strategy in this space. Together with one or two similar initiatives, including my own Smarter Cities, these arguments were presented to the corporate strategy board and stimulated the development of IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy that ran during 2009-2012.

These events exemplify the spirit of adventurous thinking that was pervasive in IBM’s technical community of that era and of the receptiveness of IBM’s top leadership to bringing IT innovation to new areas. Melissa was one of the core leaders that planted the seeds of Smarter Planet and cultivated such thinking within the global technical and marketing communities. She was fortunate that, at that time, IBM’s senior management, up to and including the CEO, encouraged this and other broad innovations and that the internal social networks of IBM allowed such innovators to discover and connect with their peers to form such “armies” of evangelists.

It can, of course, be highly risky for junior employees to pursue ideas that challenge the status quo. Melissa took some good risks to her career in pursuing this with a passion and this has resulted in her being recognized as a leader in the Smarter Cities initiative.

Colin Harrison

Former Director, Corporate Strategy, IBM,