Community Support

Melissa Hourigan has been working in the field of social media since the terms first came about. She was part of the launch of Tribe, founded by Zynga's Mark Pincus, an early social network front-runner that launched along with Friendster & LinkedIn and put the idea and power of social media into the minds of consumers for the first time.

In addition to maintaining more than 50 social profiles over the course of the last 10 years, Melissa has also worked with a number of non-profit organizations on their story telling initiatives and social media efforts.

She launched and helped maintain the social channels including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for Work Options for Women an organization that helps get women out of homelessness and the system and provides the training and support to move into the culinary profession. Melissa led the storytelling initiative by capturing the organization’s success stories on video. She also ran social media for the non-profit’s training facility and public cafe, Cafe Options (before it closed its doors in 2015).

Melissa also helped her daughter and a group of elementary students launch the Bully Proof Promise  a project that asked kids to make a promise to never hurt or bully a kid, sign a contract and then wear their vow in a Bully Proof Promise bracelet. The initiative was launched in Denver and has since fizzled out simply due to a busy teen, unable to keep it running.

Prior, Melissa sat on the Board for Metro Denver Partners for several years and led the organization’s PR and social initiatives to build awareness for the mentoring program for youth at risk.

Melissa has spent several years helping non-profits to improve their social media and has provided seminars to organizations in Colorado, here is a sample presentation.