Melissa is a licensed social worker, specializing in anti-human trafficking work, developing and maintaining multi-disciplinary teams, and secondary traumatic stress and officer wellness. Melissa is a certified trainer in Green Dot, Compassion Fatigue, GEMS, Stand to Protect, My Life My Choice, and SHARP, and is Child Welfare and Safe Zone/PRIDE trained. She has nine years of experience providing national/international training and technical assistance, and case management to victims of human trafficking.
Melissa’s past experience includes treatment foster care, youth homelessness, victim/witness programming, prevention education, and psychiatric and addictions. She was the first Human Trafficking Navigator and Victim/Witness Specialist in ND, with seven years of program development within ND.
Melissa was a nominee for the YWCA’s Women of the Year 2020.
She currently resides in St. Petersburg, FL.

Melissa has been a member of the North Dakota Human Trafficking Task Force since its inception in 2016. She is currently the chair of the Lived Experience Subcommittee and was the vice-chair of labor trafficking subcommittee for six years. Melissa also sits on the Fargo PD’s Badges of Unity Board.
She developed a human trafficking program and protocol response for ND, per grant deliverables. Melissa also assisted in the development of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Victim/Witness Program and was the first Specialist hired for that role. 
Melissa has trained over 12,000 students and professionals, and has been featured at the IAHTI, GRIT Wyoming, Shared Hope, IACP, NCPTF, Dallas CAC and IHTSJ conferences, specific to human trafficking team development, interviews and investigation considerations, person-centered and trauma informed approaches, secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue, and the implementation of programming for first responders created in ND.