Melissa Halpin on the 5 things you need to succeed
The Kindling Project Founder & Memora Principal & CEO, Melissa Halpin was interviewed about being an executive for medium.com and Authority Magazine for the series “Women Of The C-Suite” Melissa Halpin of Memora On The Five Things You Need To Succeed As A Senior Executive
A bit about Melissa
As CEO and Principal of Memora, a national experience design agency, Melissa is an executive with a deep background in the creation and management of compelling experiences for museums, foundations, and Fortune 1000 brands. She is a collaborative leader delivering across brand, digital, exhibit, event, and environmental projects. She is the Co-founder of the digital product start-ups ScreenFuture and Tonechaser, and the online community and podcast, The Kindling Project.
Set boundaries
The work never ends, and, while I love my business and the people who work for me, I have teenagers now, and I only have a few years left to spend with them before they go off into the world. That’s a priority of mine, and I need to set some boundaries to carve out time for them. I also need to make time for myself because I can’t refuel and keep myself inspired if I’m giving away all my creativity to others.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
My team members are located across the nation — in San Francisco, Detroit, Nashville, Florida, and Virginia. When we first started, we had to be a virtual agency to allow the flexibility we all needed. Many of the contributors to my company were women in similar situations to mine. It turns out that, as we’ve worked to build a more flexible way of working over the last decade, the whole world has now come along with us. During the pandemic, when people started moving to Zoom for their meetings, we had already been doing virtual meetings for years. It’s interesting because, in 2010 and 2011, when I told people I was going to have a virtual agency without a brick-and-mortar space, people looked at me like, “That’s not going to work.” Now, when I say that, it’s like, “Of course, that’s what everybody is doing.” I feel very much that we were at the forefront of changing the way that creatives can work.
Shout Out to Medium and Ming S. Zhao
A special shout-out to Medium and Ming S. Zhao for highlighting Melissa’s lifelong commitment to design and creativity. She’s used to being in the Creative Director role so it was a fun twist for her to be the subject of this interview
You can talk to Melissa and other like-minded women over in our Facebook group, The Kindling Project - Ignite! Find some kindling to start your next big fire!