Melissa serves as Northleaf’s Venture Partner and Senior Advisor, providing strategic oversight of Northleaf’s venture capital program from Northleaf’s Menlo Park office. Melissa is a member of the Investment Committees for Northleaf's Canadian venture capital funds.
After more than a decade as a Managing Director on the private equity investment team and leading Northleaf’s corporate development activities, Melissa retired from full-time employment and transitioned to the role of Venture Partner and Senior Advisor in 2018. Prior to joining Northleaf’s predecessor, TD Capital, in 2005, Melissa was an Associate at Mayfield, one of the leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, where she invested directly in early-stage technology companies and worked closely with management teams to help grow their businesses. Previously, Melissa spent a number of years working in business development and finance roles for a telecommunications company in Chile and for the high-speed Internet access division of Rogers Cable in Toronto. Prior to that, Melissa was in the investment banking group of RBC Dominion Securities where she worked on a variety of mergers and acquisition assignments.
Melissa received a B.A. (Honours) from Queen’s University and an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.