Biography: Melissa Smith is the Enrollment Marketing Strategies Director at Northwest Nazarene University. She graduated from NNU with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Communication and has spent the last 14 years working in higher education as a marketing and admissions professional. During that time, Melissa has organized over 5,000 campus visits for prospective students, given hundreds of campus tours, navigated a transition to two new University logos and a new mascot, and is currently guiding recruitment communication in strategic new ways with NNU’s new CRM—Slate. Before coming to NNU, Melissa worked for the City of Nampa and a locally-owned florist shop, where she perfected her ability to nurture good relationships with difficult managers (of course, this skill is by no means necessary working with her current boss). Melissa currently oversees digital communication to NNU’s traditional undergraduate students and their parents—which includes creating a strategy, crafting the right messages, sequences and timing, designing the way the message looks and feels, and most importantly, measuring the engagement and performance of those messages so they are guiding the most students possible to our admissions team to begin building relationships. In short, she makes email and SMS plans happen. Outside of work, you might see Melissa performing in the theatre, singing, gardening, walking the Greenbelt, or traveling with her husband and two young kids. She wants to work remotely from Hawaii, hike the Grand Canyon, and loves Ghirardelli triple-chunk brownies and all things coconut. Melissa is an Enneagram 6 and a fantastic friend!

Favorite Thing About Working at NNU: My coworkers.