Melissa has always been attracted to languages. Born in southern France, to a family of second generation Spanish immigrants, she had a bilingual childhood. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in English Language, Literature, History and Translation at the University of Grenoble 3 - Stendhal. As part of this degree, she studied for a year in the state of New York, USA. She returned to France to earn her Master’s degree in Education where she developed her interest in immersive language-learning, also known as the immersive CLIL method. Specialized in preschool, elementary school and language teaching, she passed the National Recruitment Test for Primary School teachers.

She worked as an elementary school teacher in France, before joining a preschool language immersion program as a French teacher in Cambridge, MA, USA. During the same period, Melissa was working as an in-home preschool teacher encouraging hands-on activities in French language, maths, sciences and arts. In this way, she has applied her knowledge of alternative learning methods, including the Montessori, Freinet, and Waldorf-Steiner methods. She believes that these programs respect the natural developmental progress of children, and offer each student non-conventional opportunities to succeed. Currently, she is working as an English and French teacher at the British Institute in Trento, Italy.

As Executive Consultant of the Diakron Institute, she aims to develop educational projects which are oriented to children and young adults with particular emphasis on language-learning. She is also an accomplished naturalist, passionate about the wild, and works closely with fellow Diakron consultant Nathan Ranc to innovate and realize accessible Eco-cultural expeditions as part of the Institute’s In Dialogue with the Wild program.