Melissa M. Beck is the inaugural executive director of the Sozosei Foundation. She has 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, having managed and grown large-scale nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
Before she joined the Sozosei Foundation, she served as executive director of The Educational Foundation of America (EFA), a family foundation. She took the reigns of EFA after the foundation was the victim of an embezzlement. Her leadership ensured a new pathway forward for EFA that was grounded in best practices in governance, accountability, and transparency. Under her leadership, the foundation welcomed a new staff and overhauled its entire grantmaking portfolio, redirecting its grantmaking and investing strategies into five programmatic areas.
Before she joined EFA, Melissa was CEO of Family Legal Care, an award-winning nonprofit organization that enhanced access to justice for children and families throughout New York State. Earlier, she championed criminal legal system reform on a national and local scale with a focus on decriminalizing mental illness. During this period, she was part of the team at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES) that launched The Nathaniel Project – the nation's first alternative to incarceration for people with mental illness.
Earlier in her career, Melissa was a litigator, working as an appellate and sex crimes prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office and as a private criminal defense attorney and appellate public defender. She was also an adjunct professor of nonprofit management at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, and an adjunct professor of political science at Fordham University.
Melissa has authored numerous articles on nonprofit management and social justice issues and has delivered keynotes, participated in panel discussions and debates on these topics. She was the host of the podcast Call Declined and holds volunteer leadership positions for several nonprofit organizations. These include serving as a member of the Leadership Council of the Support Center on Nonprofit Management and on the board of directors at the National Research Institute (NRI).
A graduate of Hampshire College, Melissa earned her law degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and holds a certificate in nonprofit management from the Columbia Business School. She grew up in the Henry Street Settlement House, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where her late father served as the executive director.
Melissa is a proud parent of two and spends as much time as she can going to theater, museums, hiking, creating art, reading, and cooking.