Melissa grew up in Drexel Hill, PA and comes from a large family of 6 children. Her mother is a physician and Melissa grew up admiring her mother’s position in what appeared to be a male dominant occupation. Although, she was interested in medicine, Melissa’s true passion when she was young was performing and she had a strong desire to become an actress. Despite summer theater camps, writing songs and performing whenever she could, her interests started to shift in high school where she fell in love with science. She followed this passion into college at the University of Pittsburgh where she majored in Biology and was on the premed track.
The choice to pursue a career in oncology was not intentional at first, but was an underlying theme that continued through college, into medical school and then became apparent in residency. Experiences throughout her training slowly built a passion for a career in oncology care and research that took Melissa until her second year of residency to be fully aware of. She realized through these experiences that she felt most fulfilled when caring for cancer patients. This led her to pursuing a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center where she realized that breast cancer was the niche within medical oncology that she enjoyed the most. Melissa also had the opportunity during fellowship to become chief fellow which opened the door to medical education as a part of her career. She became Associate Program Director of the Hematology/Oncology fellowship during her first year as an attending at Fox Chase which is a decision that she struggled with but has become a key feature of her career thus far at Fox Chase, and one she is glad she said yes to.