Melanie Hoffert joined the Foundation in 2018 after running her own consulting company. She has held leadership roles in the public and private sectors, delivering creative content and marketing strategies to organizations such as Teach For America and the American Academy of Neurology. She is also an accomplished writer with myriad published works, including her memoir, Prairie Silence, which won a 2014 Minnesota Book Award.

Melanie grew up in rural North Dakota, graduated from Concordia College and earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline University. She now lives in Minneapolis and is very involved as a founding board member of All Square, a civil rights social enterprise launched by her wife. Outside of work Melanie spends as much time as she can near Minnesota’s banks and shores, collecting stories for her next book centered on themes of water.