Her Story
About Melissa
Melissa Karlin serves as a copywriter at Mattel in Los Angeles, California, a role she has held since 2016. In this position, she develops names for toy products and collaborates with teams on brand creative themes, segment names, and creative storytelling development to connect with audiences. Her professional path includes earlier experience in custom publishing as an account executive, creative work in the art world and nonprofit spaces, and creative projects for law firms. She began her education at Cal State Northridge before transferring to a school in the UK, where she earned her bachelor's degree in 2011, and later completed a master's degree in London from 2013 to 2014. Karlin attributes her contributions to being an effective team member who navigates conversations and manages diverse stakeholder expectations, including legal reviews and the constraints of multi-language packaging that requires conveying ideas in just one to three words. She values integrity, creativity, and collaboration both professionally and personally, and advises flexibility, directness, and inclusivity while standing firm in one's beliefs.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Melissa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I don't know if I would consider myself successful, honestly. Right now, it's more about being a successful part of a team. Like, it's more about being a part of these conversations and figuring out how to navigate them together, as opposed to an individual expression of success.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
To care less. Don't take it so personally. Just sort of roll with it. Be flexible and malleable and try to find a solution that everyone is pretty happy with, and sometimes that means not being able to get it the way that you believe it should be.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Be a team player, but also stand for what you believe. Be open to conversation and problem solving with everyone else. You have a support system of people, and there are people who will be there to support you along the way. Be creative, be direct, be inclusive. Misogyny rears its head a lot of times, and it is also difficult to get through that sometimes.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is managing everyone else's expectations and priorities, and having to not only play creator but also argue my case or take other people's perspectives into consideration and manage many different opinions and many different stakeholders. Also managing if something clears legal search or not. Another big challenge of toy copywriting specifically is a lot of it is multi-language packaging, and you have to be able to explain what something is with one to three words.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Probably integrity and creativity, I would say, as well as collaboration. All three of those connect with how I try to live my life in and out of work.
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