Women in Leadership: Melanie Coffee

At HerSpace, we are proud to be part of a collective and necessary effort to be active participants in helping women advance in their social, personal and professional lives. We have designed the Women in Leadership series as a way to amplify the voices, stories and experiences of women. Our featured women speakers have diverse backgrounds, have reached milestones in their careers,  and have made an impact in their industry and communities. We all benefit when stories of challenges and wins are shared. We offer their stories, knowledge and insights to help empower you in your own journey.

Women in Leadership is a recurring event that will feature an inspirational female leader every month. If you would like to nominate a woman in your network as a way to honor her work, please reach out so our collection can grow with our community.

Melanie Coffee

Melanie Coffee is an award-winning journalist with 20 years of editorial and journalistic planning, content development and management experience across both traditional and digital media platforms – including 12+ years with the world’s largest news organization. Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Crain’s Chicago Business, the Chicago Reporter, Rebellious Magazine for Women and many more. She worked with The Associated Press for more than 12 years in Chicago, Kansas City and St.Louis. She was also the web editor of an investigative journalism magazine in Chicago. Her love of language has given her excellent editing skills and a keen eye for identifying trends and compelling stories for a national audience. She has also conducted diversity workshops for 15 years.

Cost: NOK 150. You can register HERE.

Maximum attendees: 20

*This event will be held in-person at HerSpace.
** This event is free or discounted for HerSpace Members.

Chisom Udeze

Founder of Diversify, Diversify Consult, HerSpace & The Annual

Chisom is an Economist, a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Strategist, and a 3 times founder of impact driven companies. She has over 14 years of experience working with organizations like the European Commission, The United Nations, ExxonMobil and The Economist Group. Chisom is analytical and a data enthusiast. She is passionate about interrogating the cross-sectoral relationship between society’s inhabitants, resources, production, technology, distribution and output. She efficiently and effectively unlocks complex systems, interprets data, forecasts socio-economic trends and conducts research.

Having lived and worked in 7 countries across 3 continents, she is highly adaptable to different circumstances and people, and thrives in uncertain environments.

As the founder of Diversify and Diversify Consult, Chisom and her team work with companies, institutions, governments and civil society to develop sustainable DEIB strategies and embed measurable diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace and society. In addition, in 2022, Diversify launched the Diversify Nordics Summit, the largest conference in the Nordics that gathers cross-sectoral stakeholders to amplify DEIB in the Nordics and beyond.

In 2020, she founded HerSpace, a diverse and inclusive co-creation community for all genders, with particular focus on women and non-binary people. In 2022, HerSpace launched HerTech, Women in Tech incubator, for women-led companies, with a focus on the inclusion of diverse founders. 

Chisom is a thought-leader in DEIB and a passionate advocate for mental health and wellness. She writes often on DEIB and justice related topics, some of her work is published on Forbes.

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