Melissa Antal Iftimie Email and Phone Number

I mentored and advised pre-seed and seed stage women's health, femtech, nutrition and wellness companies in business model optimization, community building, operations, product and content strategy and growth marketing.

On Deck is a curated community to support early-stage founders. I joined ODF17 to explore building a new company in the women's health and/or mom tech space.

I joined the Willow Digital team to develop a point of view and strategy for lactation and baby nutrition content and partnerships. This work included managing a makeover of Fooblie content for its new home at Willow working with scientific advisors, writers, editors, product and creatives. I also advised the team on go-to-market, monetization, personalization and product marketing strategies, sharing key takeaways from my startup experience.

Fooblie was a digital health company that connected expecting and new parents to nutrition experts and resources. There was no one-stop, doctor-approved place to go for pregnancy, postpartum, baby and child nutrition, so we built it. In addition to running everything from day-to-day operations to strategic planning and fundraising, some achievements to highlight are:- Created the Fooblie brand and brought it to life, leading development and execution of a data-driven, multi-channel integrated marketing strategy - Built Fooblie’s community of expecting and new parents, plus an expert network including registered dietitians, lactation consultants, pediatricians, and other key stakeholders- Created Fooblie’s digital presence including an e-commerce store for digital goods and services, social media and a content hub. Fooblie produced over 200 doctor-approved articles, tools, bootcamps, webinars, courses and videos. - Conducted qualitative and quantitative customer and competitor research to inform product road map, business strategies and campaigns. - Managed product team to develop a native, HIPAA compliant iOS and Android app.- Maintained a 4.96 star average customer rating serving over 10,000 families. - Led the company to profit in under 3 years and secured a successful exit for our investors, early supporters and staff.

- Developed a content strategy with 3 personalized digital care plan tracks (preconception, pregnancy and postpartum), for a digital reproductive health and at-home blood testing company.- Refined the brand voice and tone and created a style guide for future consultants/employees.- Created an email welcome series for eCommerce customers and B2B employer partners.

For 50 years, The Manoff Group has worked around the world to bring about the social and behavior change necessary for people to live healthier lives by solving problems in women’s health, family planning, newborn and child health, nutrition, the environment and HIV/AIDS. Manoff's Behavior-Centered Programming approach is a practical and proven, systematic and consultative approach to changing individual, family, and community behaviors. The Manoff Group is a leader in qualitative research methods. The company pioneered Trials of Improved Practices (TIPs), an approach where, similar to product testing in advertising, families or caregivers test out practices and provide feedback. The women-owned small business is also known for communications work including designing enabling technologies, products and materials for development projects.Melissa did a little bit of everything in her role, ranging from business development to program management. Her major responsibility was to design, backstop and provide technical support to projects focusing on social and behavior change in nutrition, ag-nutrition, health and food security. Her technical support includes managing formative and operational research including TIPs studies, developing project-wide behavior change and communication strategies and designing communication materials. She managed a Randomized Control Trial in rural Zambia looking at the effectiveness of a specially designed child-feeding bowl. In this role, Melissa has supported projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

WFP targets smallholder farming households to help strengthen food security through its Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme. P4P links smallholders to quality markets so they can gain greater and more direct benefit from selling their produce. This was done by addressing the two principal constraints facing smallholder farmers in Uganda: inadequate market infrastructure and poor productivity due to postharvest losses. P4P activities included installing agro-processing equipment, constructing large warehouses and satellite collection points, improving access roads, expanding trainings to maximize postharvest handling efforts, buying from smallholder farmers and linking farmers to improved markets and buyers such as WFP.Here Melissa managed communication and M&E components of P4P. She worked with millers on adopting micronutrient fortification policies into their businesses, conducted formative research with smallholder farmers, integrated technology into the project and managed implementing partners.

In 2008, WFP, the largest humanitarian organization, shifted from a food aid to a food assistance agency. This change in approach allowed for the inclusion of a broader set of tools, not just food aid to combat hunger.Melissa worked with the Nutrition Coordinator to elevate the status of nutrition throughout the organization in line with the new strategic approach and supported WFP champion nutrition globally.

REACH is a global partnership committed to meeting the nutrition needs of the world's most vulnerable children and women, through evidenced based analysis and innovative programming that builds government institutional capacity, strengthens policy planning skills and prioritizes scarce resources. It was jointly established in 2008 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP). Melissa mobilzed resources from the Gates Foundation, supported country pilots in Mauritania and Laos and conducted research to inform its communication strategy.

The GW Africa Center for Health and Human Security connected the GW community with organizations in Africa. Melissa supported grant development and research for a maternal and child health program in Rwanda.

As the food rescue and food bank program serving Washtenaw County, Food Gatherers exists to alleviate hunger and eliminate its causes in our community. Melissa volunteered weekly to serve meals at the Community Kitchen. The Food Gatherers' Community Kitchen Job Training Program provides low-income and at-risk youth (ages 16-20) with instruction in basic culinary arts, food safety and sanitation, work ethics and life skills. For the Summer 2007 class, Melissa supported all aspects of the program ranging from session organization to teaching to mentoring.

As the state’s leading AIDS organization, AIDS Partnership Michigan has been dedicated to preventing the spread of HIV for over 30 years. The organization offers a range of services statewide and in Detroit, from testing to counseling to answering questions on our hotline. Melissa volunteered weekly as a hotline responder.

The vision for United Way is to improve people's lives and strengthen communities across the region by ensuring all citizens have access to the basic building blocks of a good life —education, income and health. Melissa supported the team research and understand the unique needs of (and within) Somerset County, accompanied site visits and supported community events.