Senior Consultant, Social Media & Web Strategy

Melissa is a part of Academica's web strategy and innovation task force. In this role she has consulted in the development of a number of web best practices reports as well as web and e-community strategy for clients such as the Sprott School of Business, Bishop's University and Cambrian College. Drawing on years of online and print layout and strategy experience, Melissa conducts social media, online visibility and web best practice audits and stragies for our clients.

With formal training in graphic design, multimedia development and web layout and strategy, Melissa has worked in the field of web design and maintenance for ten years. She is also trained in print layout and photography.

Previous roles have seen Melissa providing technology orientation for several organizations, including the University of Western Ontario, as well as serving two contracts with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food where she provided staff training, content migration strategy and large-scale update coordination on the Ministry's website of over 17,000 pages. Further to this, she has also coordinated strategic web redesign for several organizations, including the London Abused Women's Centre and the Sprott School of Business.

Beyond web, Melissa has been an active member of the academic community throughout her studies and continues to do research for the Faculty of Information & Media Studies and the AnonEquity project which brings together leading academics across Canada to consider privacy issues from legal, technology and sociological angles.

Melissa has an Honours BA degree through the Media & Public Interest program offered through the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Her thesis was written on social network theory and e-community websites.