Melissa Vela-Williamson, APR is an internationally recognized and accredited award-winning public relations expert, author, and national columnist with two decades of general market and multicultural integrated marketing communications experience in agency, corporate, and nonprofit settings.

Today, she serves clients as the Chief Communication Architect of her own boutique firm, MVW Communications. Melissa is a 360° integrated marketing communicator but has expertise and accreditation in public relations. As a unique attribute, Melissa has worked in internal communications and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for a corporation during her career. She is one of only 5,000 PR professionals around the world with the “APR” distinction and recently earned her accreditation as a Certified Diversity Professional. Her inclusive PR point of view influences any communication challenge she tackles.

In this week’s episode, we talk about Melissa‘s journey into the PR industry. Latinas make up only about 10% of the PR industry and the industry itself tends to favor white men and women more than any other race. And while these facts are discouraging, Melissa has pushed through, taking her nonlinear career journey and creating the amazing PR business that she has today. Listen to find out how she pushed through all her doubts, and became the representation that she wanted to see for herself. 

Keep up with Melissa on his website and on his LinkedIn. 

For all Hella Latin@ updates, follow @hellalatinopodcast on Instagram and connect on LinkedIn. More at odalysjasmine.com.

Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.