How do we meet this moment together?
My keynotes and workshops help mission-centered leaders navigate uncertain times with clarity, creativity, and grace.
Hello, my name is Melanie Ho. I'm an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and workshop facilitator.
A lot of leaders right now know something isn't working — in their institutions, their teams, or their own relationship to their work — but can't quite name it, let alone say it out loud. The old playbooks don't seem to be built for these times. The treadmill doesn't stop. But what do we do instead?
My sessions explore this question in ways that are clarifying, unexpected, and even fun. I bring my background as an artist, storyteller, and educator to make difficult topics engaging and accessible — and my experience as a former executive and consultant to provide tools, action plans, and resources to carry the work forward.
Facilitating new ways of thinking
“Melanie has built businesses, served as an executive leader, and advised multi-billion-dollar institutions — and that’s only a fraction of the unique expertise she brings to her work as a speaker and facilitator. She also draws on her background as a storyteller, educator, and artist to facilitate her audience to new ways of thinking. Our sessions with Melanie are always creative, memorable, and actionable.”
— Yolanda Gorman, Chief of Staff and Special Advisor to the Chancellor, UCLA
Explore my original frameworks and tools
A great session should be just the beginning. I develop original models, assessments, and workbooks so participants can keep the work going long after we're done — each refined through work with hundreds of leaders. Two you can explore right now:
Conflict Foresight Model — for anticipating resistance before it derails your efforts
Boundary Saboteurs Assessment — for identifying the internal patterns keeping you on the treadmill
Workshop and retreat participants receive additional tailored workbooks and guides to go deeper.
Experience with some of the world’s most complex organizations
In any given week, you might find me leading presentations for teams across sectors. But I initially cut my teeth in consulting for higher education leaders: advising hundreds of college and university presidents, provosts, CFOs, and deans. I gained a special appreciation for the challenges of managing extreme complexity — whether aligning disparate stakeholders, balancing mission and margin, steering large-scale initiatives in matrixed environments, or confronting continuous public scrutiny and market disruption.
I continue to maintain a select higher ed practice and am honored to partner with The Chronicle of Higher Education to lead several Chronicle professional development programs open to college and university leaders, including the Leadership Transformation Collaborative and Women Leading Change.
Storytelling to spark discussion and change
Some of the hardest leadership challenges are easier to understand — and discuss — through story.
Beyond Leaning In
A Business Novel
Based on research but told as a fast-paced novel, Beyond Leaning In uses fiction to surface the hidden dynamics that make gender equity so hard to achieve — and so easy to misunderstand.
Silver medalist, 2022 Axiom Awards.
University of the Surreal
A Fiction Podcast
A three-story Goldfish Bowl has appeared overnight on the university quad. No one knows what it means — but committees have been formed, the fish need feeding, and the college president is too busy drowning in his inbox to look up. A serialized fiction podcast about the things we learn not to see.
Ready to do something different with your team?
Complex times call for new thinking — and a little creative courage.
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