Melinda Brunell has been the person responsible for making things work.

As a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Human Resources Officer, and Chief Communications Officer, she’s led through the moments where strategy meets reality—when plans have to turn into decisions, systems, and day-to-day work.

That experience shapes how she shows up with clients.

Melinda works with leaders to bring clarity to what needs to change and what it will take to make it stick. She focuses on the parts of an organization that often get overlooked—how people are rewarded, how performance is managed, how leaders lead—because that’s where strategy either takes hold or falls apart.

Before joining Strategy Muse, Melinda held senior leadership roles across consulting and industry. She served as Chief Operating Officer at Gagen MacDonald, where she helped grow the firm while building its internal systems for performance and compensation. She also led organizational capability at the National Dairy Council, supporting a major shift in strategy by strengthening how the organization worked, from communication to talent to culture. Over the course of her career, she has worked with organizations including Accenture, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Waste Management.

At Strategy Muse, Melinda has led major organizational and HR transformations for global clients—from implementing new systems to rethinking compensation and performance management to building leadership development strategies. Her focus is simple: making sure change shows up in how people actually work.

She’s known for her clarity, her candor, and her ability to help leaders move from talking about change to actually making it happen.

Melinda meets regularly with a neighborhood book club, where the richest conversations are about what's said, what's not said, and what sits between the lines—the same attention she brings to the overlooked parts of an organization, where change takes hold or falls apart.

Education

• Washington State University, BA, Communications

Certifications

• Certified in Human Resources Management, Cornell University

• Certified in Publishing, University of Chicago

• Accredited in Public Relations (APR), Public Relations Society of America

• Certified in Korn Ferry Leadership Architect ® Competency Suite