About

Melissa is President of Networlding, a consulting, training and coaching organization specializing in helping individuals and organizations harness the power of social media and social networks to leverage their brand. Networlding, now ten years old, is focused on: 1) assisting individuals who are interested in licensing the Networlding process, 2) coaching individuals in job transition, 3) helping organizations implement effective social networking and new media initiatives for marketing, business communications, pr, hiring, leadership development, and innovation and 4) providing publishing services for thought leaders (in the form of blogs, e-books, books and more. The Networlding process provides the foundation for all of its consulting, training and coaching support offered by Melissa and her alliance network of some of the most skilled social networking and social media experts in the world. Located in Chicago, Melissa’s organization provides support to thought leaders and fast-growth companies around the world.  For more information click here.

Melissa is the author and co-author of 11 books, including Networlding, #10 on Amazon for a year (in Chicago) and licensed by organizations like Motorola and universities like Yale.

Speaking

If you’re looking for a speaker visit Melissa’s speaking page. Melissa’s keynote and panel talks focus on social networking in the enterprise, optimizing the use of online social networking tools like blogs and sites like LinkedIn where she has provided training for more than 4000 professionals over the past seven years. Melissa addresses the overarching question of what is the 20% online that can yield the 80% return. From her work with thousands of entrepreneurs to her work with dozens of the top Fortune 500 companies like Disney, Motorola, UBS, American Express and Office Depot as well as many mid-sized organizations, Melissa has extensive experience and unlimited creativity to help organizations harness web 2.0.

Relevant Experience

For those of you who appreciate bullet points, following are just some of Melissa’s past work that is relevant:

• Won an “Outstanding Woman of the Decade” award by The University of Chicago Women’s Business Advisory Group
• Taught networking since 1987 when she wrote her first networking book, Make Your Connections Count.
• Wrote Networlding, her seventh book and in the first year with The Chicagoland Chamber as a partner took 1000 professionals through Networlding bootcamps.
• Worked as a VP writing whitepapers on networks for a company called Participate.com where we worked on AT&T’s worldnet, Arthur Andersen’s KnowledgeSpace and The Ace Hardware Dealer network (to name a few).
• Gifted an innovation center for a year  at 401 N. Michigan Ave. in the heart of Chicago’s retail Magnificent Mile in 2006.
• Hosted a revitalization event for the city of Chicago during the recession in October 2002 with 35 tables of ten all hosted by top leaders in the city who volunteered their time to work with us to help revitalize the economy.
• Formed The Networlding Partner Alliance with my co-author, Steve Benton, of my 11th book (on internal social networks)
• Assisted top thought leaders such as Andres Tapia, Chief Diversity Officer of Hewitt in the creation of his first, ground breaking book called The Inclusion Paradox.
• Hosted hundreds of interactive networking events and delivering, on average, fifty presentations a year on the science and art of social networking.
• Coaches over 4000 people on the use of social networking tools–specifically LinkedIn.
• Received a six-figure fee for acting as a spokesperson for a Fortune 500 tele-communications company with the goal of networking in communities, starting with Chicago, to grow brand loyalty.
• Authored and/or co-authored 12 books with the next one in the queue: 50 Ways to Better Social Media.