Melissa was born and raised in New York, and went on to study cognitive science and poetry at UPenn, where she first discovered her passion for emotion science. She then got her Masters of Education and Ph.D. in Cognitive Science at Columbia University, while also gaining experience in children’s media at Sesame Workshop and performing and writing comedy. She and her now Co-Founder, Ilya Lyashevsky, co-created a class at Columbia called ‘The Cognition of Social Emotional Learning,’ which they’ve been teaching for over nine years. Together, they are motivated by a shared vision of an emotionally literate humanity and the knowing that both the arts and sciences are required to help humanity arrive at a new level of emotional awareness and resilience.