Her Story
About Melody
My career journey has been wonderfully non-linear and passion-driven. I began as a process engineer at Toyota's North American engineering headquarters, where I spent 6 years before deciding to pursue something more aligned with my passions. As an avid runner who trained others for marathons, I joined Road ID, a startup creating safety identification products for athletes who had just secured a Tour de France sponsorship. I helped them with process, inventory, and operations during their rapid growth phase for about 5 years. After taking time away when my son was born with medical needs, I found myself managing an anti-trafficking program working with partners in Southeast Asia, though the extensive travel eventually became too demanding for my young family. A conversation with the HR director at my church, which had over 300 staff members, led me into human resources. She needed help with processes and systems, areas where I excelled, and I discovered I loved the function of HR. I spent about 7 years there as HR manager, establishing procedures and automation. Now I'm at Changing Gears, an incredible nonprofit in Cincinnati where I handle human resources, office management, and operations. I'm proud of how I've been able to help build the foundation for our growth through recruiting and systems, allowing us to reach more clients and provide them with transportation access so they can get to work. Throughout my journey, I've followed the passions placed on my heart, trusting that staying true to my values would lead me to meaningful work.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Melody
01What do you attribute your success to?
I am someone who is very dedicated to my faith journey, and the decisions I've made and the path I've gone along tend to be contemplative. I spend time in prayer and meditation before stepping into something new. Even with the role I'm in right now, I didn't know what I was going to do next, and I spent time in prayer. I felt very calm and grounded in believing there was something for me, and then within days, I had a request from one of the co-founders of this organization. Everything was perfect - the timing, the schedule, and the work. I think if I had just gone off my own brain and said I need to follow outside of my values, or just what everybody else was doing, I never would have had the opportunity to have this cool path where I could do things that I was passionate about. It's about following the passions that are put on my heart and trusting that will provide.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't make decisions based on fear. Be willing to step outside the normal path to try something new. There are so many things that have been said to me, but those are probably the most important pieces of advice I can share.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think recruiting continues to be a major challenge - finding talent is an area that's so difficult. Even though there are so many tools out there like job boards and LinkedIn, I don't feel like we have quite figured out how to connect the right people to the job and do it in a way that's really efficient. It's still very time-consuming and there are so many conversations that are not right. I think AI could help with that, but sometimes it's creating more issues than it's solving, at least in the beginning. There's a lot of opportunity to figure out a way to get the right people to the right jobs.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say that faith is first and foremost. Integrity is incredibly important to me. And humor - I think if you're not having fun, if you're taking yourself too seriously, then it just makes everything worse. Those are probably my top three values.
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