Melanie Kahl is a facilitator, experience designer, strategist, and educator who believes in the power of community-driven design to shape meaningful and equitable organizations, experiences, and services. For the last thirteen years, she’s led social innovation projects across five continents in community development, health, gender, and education. A builder by nature, Melanie has grown multiple internal studios and initiatives. Most recently, she launched Facebook’s Community-in-Residence program to invest $5M in community-driven projects and promote mutual learning between tech and community leaders. She was an early leader at Dalberg Design where she cultivated portfolios on gender, urban resilience, and organizational innovation.Melanie began her career at the intersection of design and learning, co-creating school environments and models with CannonDesign, Perkins&Will, and the Chicago Public Schools’ New School Incubator. This is where she honed her commitment to building with communities, her love of pedagogy, and became known for crafting joyful, experiential, and participatory processes. She studied social policy, organizational learning, and leadership from Northwestern University and has studied and taught at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and a variety of universities. Melanie loves to think about how to unleash welcome, belonging, and wholeness in our modern world and serves as an advisor to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a trustee for the Awesome Foundation, and an ambassador to Women in Innovation (WIN). You can find her wandering around the city or woods, hosting potlucks, and cooking up delicious and meaningful experiences for those she loves.