Melissa Herman is the Director of Graduate NYC.

In this role, she is responsible for managing all aspects of GNYC’s flagship project, the College Completion Innovation Fund. This includes guiding the Advisory Board through the entire award cycle process and overseeing the CCIF’s Peer Learning Community, comprised of project personnel from its funded projects.

Prior to joining the GNYC team, she was the Associate Director for Partnership Support at PENCIL, overseeing a team of Partnership Managers and developing the organization’s college and career readiness programming. During her tenure at PENCIL, she worked extensively within the NYC public school system on strategic partnership development as well as college readiness and project-based learning programming for students. Prior to PENCIL, Melissa worked at the International Organization For Adolescents within their youth development initiative.

Melissa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and History from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Public Administration from New York University.