Hi, I’m Melissa.

Six years ago I left a 12-year career in Pharma and Biotech to build something that didn't exist: a coaching practice designed specifically for the women I used to work alongside.

I spent over a decade in Talent and Organizational Development inside global companies — AstraZeneca, Human Genome Sciences, and Emergent BioSolutions — watching how decisions about people were actually made inside real organizations, across real teams, inside real Pharma and Biotech culture. That's where her Master's in Organizational Psychology stopped being theory and started being a diagnostic tool.

I heard the war stories nobody puts on paper. The patterns nobody names out loud. The reasons promotions happen, and the reasons they don't.

And I was also one of the women being talked about. I exceeded expectations and watched the path stall anyway. I did everything I was supposed to do — the degrees, the programs, the work — and still sat with the question of whether it was ever going to add up to what I actually wanted.

I know what's said when the room closes — because I was in the room. And I know what it feels like to be the woman they're talking about — because I was her.