Melissa Alexander

Melissa is a creative professional working at the intersection of design, technology, data, urbanism, and visualization. After earning a Bachelor of Architecture with a minor in Studio Art, she practiced architecture in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Nashville, while exploring furniture design and supporting urban-focused nonprofits as a design fellow. She earned a Master of Architecture in Urban Design, with Distinction, from Harvard GSD. Her research, Riding the Rails, traced the urban impacts of high-speed rail and received the Druker Traveling Fellowship. Over the next decade she transitioned from architecture and urban design to data and analytics, specializing in visualization for large-scale master plans, and completed a second master’s in data Analytics and Visualization at MICA. Her capstone project, Thin Ice, was shortlisted for an international Information is Beautiful Award. Based in Seattle, she serves on UW PCE’s Data Visualization advisory board and is a former Seattle Design Review Board co-chair.