Welcome to my Medium

Hi! I’m Melissa. Thanks for stopping by.

I write at the intersection of cities, social enterprise, and health. I believe we can build places that set us up for health and wealth. To do so, we need to change how we think about health, embrace entrepreneurship and innovate how we fund new ideas.

I’m currently building Solarpunk Ventures, an institute for healthy, equitable cities.

Here is a little bit about the journey that brought me here today.

• I learned about economic development in a Bedouin village in Jordan and quickly became a skeptic of conventional approaches to charity and the aid industry.

• My next job was in affordable housing in Virginia where I learned our zip codes determine everything. I helped design services that could contribute to our “double bottom line” — proving that investing in our people could make a property more resilient and less costly to manage.
• Convinced social enterprise offered another path to increasing opportunity, I completed a Masters in Public Service at NYU and immediately moved to Kenya to start my first social venture.
• After growing my urban health venture to be one of the largest low-cost healthcare providers in the country, I stepped away, ready for the next challenge, and started writing online.
• In the last two years, I’ve helped establish platform strategy and operations for an emerging African VC, co-designed a course and community on impact investing, and published over 35 essays on startups, investing, cities, and what I call Neighborhood Vitals.

Some articles that show how I think are Smart City, Just City about ground-up innovation, and A City’s Hidden Assets which looks at creative business models that leverage underused resources.

My favorite thing about writing is the conversations my essays spark, so please jump into the comments. I look forward to meeting you!

Melissa