Melissa Noel - 2020 Health & Wellness Panelist

Melissa Noel is an award-winning multimedia journalist, tv personality and media entrepreneur. As an independent television correspondent and producer, Melissa covers breaking news and feature stories across the United States and the Caribbean region for outlets including One Caribbean Television, CBS News USVI and ABC News USVI.

Melissa is also a contributing writer to Huffpost.com and Essence.com. Her work has also appeared on LonelyPlanet.com, Voices of NY, Caribbean Beat Magazine, theGrio.com, Ebony Magazine and ABC News’ “World News Tonight”.

During her tenure as a contributing reporting to NBCNews.com, Melissa reported and produced two innovative and award-winning story series, ‘Black and Undocumented’ centered on the legal battles of undocumented Black immigrants and ‘Love in A Barrel’ about Jamaica’s ‘Barrel Children’, Caribbean migration and mental health. 

Melissa is known for her dynamic stories that consistently take both complicated and underreported issues, breaks them down and presents informative and engaging pieces to international audiences. For the past seven years—since making the switch from network television news production to specializing in coverage of the Caribbean—her stories on culture, race, travel, immigration, climate change and mental health, actively inform and expand the ways in which we see, discuss and cover the experiences of the African Diaspora.

In addition to her role as a correspondent, she regularly works as a journalism educator with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Melissa holds a BA in broadcast journalism from Howard University and an MA in journalism and urban affairs from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. She is a proud Guyanese American based between New York City and the Caribbean.