Melissa Mackey (MACK)

Melissa Mackey is an accomplished entrepreneur, technologist, and venture capitalist with more than 15 years of experience driving growth, innovation, and positive brand perception for startups, corporate, nonprofit, and agency organizations. She is the founder and CEO of LU Management, which specializes in accelerating professional athletes and their families in their pursuit of entrepreneurship and venture capital. Additionally, Mellissa is an advisory board member for the Michigan State Foundation, a highly competitive, persuasive, and articulate speaker, and a highly sought-after entrepreneurial coach.

Mackey has an extensive background and experience in health care, digital marketing, and social media strategies, which she developed throughout her career, working with four Fortune 500 companies. Until May 2019, she was the founder and head of the Verizon Innovation Garage, where she led global open innovation, startup evaluation, partnership strategy, and M&A related to the consumer division of Verizon. In 2018, Mackey founded Reliefium, an early-stage health startup with a mission to legitimize and destigmatize the utilization of cannabinoid therapy.

Aside from that, Mackey is highly regarded as an expert in several fields, including branding, driving innovation, creating holistic digital products, and identifying new monetization streams, among others. She's helped startups and enterprises monetize emerging technologies, evaluated various startups for investment, and advised early-stage startups on commercialization pathways, go-to-market strategies and strategic partnerships.

Mackey has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Advertising from Michigan State University and has completed a Division of Continuing Education, Digital Marketing, and Social Media Strategies program at Harvard University. She's received several accolades throughout her career, including being listed as one of the Top 40 Healthcare Transformers by Medical Marketing & Media and ELITE Disrupter by PM360.