Melissa Pierce

Melissa Pierce is a mother, life coach, author, computer programmer, start-up founder, and sought after motivational and business speaker. Melissa's passionate and humorous delivery style has charmed audiences on subjects as varied as start-up and engineering culture, online video, social media, the internet revolution, online community development, crowd sourcing, living your passion, and raising smart creative children in the digital age.

Melissa Pierce is the producer of the award winning, bootstrapped documentary series, Life in Perpetual Beta (2009) and the producer and director of the documentary about Grace Murray Hopper entitled Born with Curiosity (2016).

She has been featured on CNN, ABC, and Fox, she and her companies have been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Laughing Squid, and PSFK. She's been a guest on several highly rated podcasts, was listed as one of Chicago Top 100 entrepreneurs, and is cited as an inspiration in books and magazines alike.

Melissa has presented at conferences and film festivals all over the United States including South by Southwest, SOBcon, Digital Capitol Week, The 140 Character Conference, The Brooklyn DUMBO Arts Festival, and Gnomedex (at which she keynoted). She has been hired as a speaker by a variety of companies ranging from cosmetics to internet marketing, and is a sought after influencer having represented companies such as Panasonic, Nokia, Swarovski Crystal, Chevrolet, and Whrrl (acquired by Groupon in 2011).

Melissa is the principal at Optimist Lens Production Company, former COO and current board member of Everpurse, Executive Director of Chicago Women Developers, COO and CTO of the women's cannabis wellness company, Ellementa and holds a board seat at Chicago not for profit MRelief. She is also a proud member of Mensa.