Melissa Noel is a multi-award-winning Guyanese-American media entrepreneur, journalist, producer, and Founder and Chief Content Officer of Mel&N Media Group. She leads a culture-driven media and production company that partners with cultural institutions, travel brands, and global organizations to design narrative strategy, produce live experiences, and build platforms that move culture and commerce forward.

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With more than 15 years of experience across news, media, and entertainment, Melissa has helped transform how Caribbean and diaspora stories are told, prioritized, and presented to global audiences. Her career spans on-air correspondent roles at One Caribbean Television and CBS Puerto Rico, as well as producing and reporting positions at NBC News and ABC News. Most recently, as Senior News and Travel Editor at ESSENCE, she led coverage of race, culture, identity, and travel for a global Black audience. She also served for four years as an editorial lead for the ESSENCE Festival of Culture, one of the largest cultural festivals in the United States, producing programming featuring bestselling authors, filmmakers, newsmakers, cultural leaders, and heads of state.

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Melissa has hosted international panels, moderated cultural forums, and delivered keynotes for organizations including the United Nations, The New York Times, and the National Association of Black Journalists.

A two-time Diaspora Journalist of the Year, Pulitzer Center grantee, and Ethel Payne International Reporting Fellow, Melissa has spent her career demonstrating that authentic cultural storytelling is not a niche. It is a global force.

Her forthcoming docuseries, Destination Diaspora®, traces the living cultural connections across the global African diaspora, uncovering how cultures have traveled, transformed, and thrived through food, music, language, dance, and tradition. In 2025, the series won the inaugural BET+ and Black Travel Summit Passport to Storytelling competition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, marking a breakthrough moment for diaspora storytelling on the global stage.

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Melissa graduated summa cum laude from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism and holds a Master of Arts in Journalism from the City University of New York.