Meet Emmers' Founder, Melanie!
Melanie created Emmers after nine years of building America's leading non-profit focused on relationship health education and abuse prevention. During her extensive work with the 11-22 year-old age group, Melanie identified a crucial gap in their development. She realized that many young individuals struggled to establish healthy relationships and make sound decisions due to the absence of vital cognitive-emotional skills. These essential building blocks, including emotion identification, emotion regulation, empathy, self-esteem, and effective communication, needed nurturing from an earlier age.
Driven by her experiences and insights, Melanie began having conversations with her eight nieces and nephews about these skills, igniting the spark that would become Emmers. She began creating games to dive deeper into these conversations through play. She wanted to work with them to build the emotional strength and skills as young children that could support them to thrive through the inevitable challenges that come with growing up.
She watched as her nieces and nephews - and their parents - yearned for more of this learning through play. Through this experience, Melanie’s passion for giving children the tools to thrive only grew, and she began diving into the research and working with experts to develop games that could impact the children she loves so much.
That’s when Melanie developed Emmers, named after a nick-name that her nieces and nephews gave her when “Auntie M” turned into “Auntie Emmers.” She is currently in the research and development phase of game design, and can reached through the Emmers contact page.
Melanie graduated from Duke University with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a certificate in Children in Contemporary Society, where she also worked in a pre-school classroom. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she served as the school’s Chief Community Officer and was awarded the Dean’s Award.