Melissa Rich is a passionate, mission driven strategy, growth and impact leader.
Today, Melissa is focusing her entrepreneurial experience on the (re) launch of supersisters™, a company created by her mother, Lois Rich and her aunt, Barbara Egerman in 1978. The mission of supersisters, a family-owned publisher of baseball-type cards featuring contemporary American women of achievement was to provide a way for girls to find inspiration by learning about established and up-and-coming women leaders in professions as varied as sports and science, entertainment and engineering, politics, and powerful corporate roles – an opportunity that four decades ago was missing from much of mainstream media, marketing, toys, and textbooks. Today, our mission remains the same – to celebrate the transformative power of pioneering women and the uncompromising spirit of girls everywhere.
Deeply interested in topics surrounding education, youth and social impact, Melissa has spent the last 5 years consulting, advising and mentoring numerous mission-aligned change makers, education leaders, entrepreneurs, companies, and non-profits - to challenge and transform the current education landscape to engage and empower youth of all circumstances to thrive.
Melissa began her entrepreneurial career as CEO, President and Founder of InterSchola, a high growth, award winning, 25-person social impact company. InterSchola identified a latent market need by providing auction management solutions for K-16 school districts to transform surplus assets and obsolete equipment into a much-needed revenue stream through eBay style online auctions.
In 2012, InterSchola was named to Inc. Magazine 5000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies and in 2010, the company was named to the San Francisco Business Times Bay Area’s List of Fastest Growing Companies. The company was also recognized by the SF Chamber of Commerce with a distinguished Ebbies Award in 2010.
In 2012, InterSchola ‘s CEO, Melissa Rich was named one of Business Week’s top 25 Social Entrepreneurs (#2). Further, Ms. Rich was honored as 2011 Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by San Francisco’s Women’s Initiative and as Outstanding Woman in Business for 2012 by the city of San Francisco, California, and as one of Women 2.0’s 5 Female Founders to Watch: Starting Up to Do Good in 2013.
Prior to founding InterSchola, Rich was Director of Business Development and senior financial manager at Classroom Connect (acquired by Harcourt). Rich joined Classroom Connect from Intel Capital, Intel’s strategic venture capital investment arm. While at Intel Capital, Rich’s area of investment focus included: early-stage technologies, ecommerce, rich media creation and delivery, and content areas including Ed tech. Following the successful investment of funds by Intel in Classroom Connect, Rich joined the Classroom Connect management team. Additional professional experience includes finance, strategy and business development roles at Chemical Bank (now Chase/JP Morgan), Sony Corporation of America and Excite, Inc. Rich is a graduate of Dartmouth College (BA) and The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (MBA).
While now a resident of Indianapolis, Indiana (with roots in New York and California), Melissa currently serves on the board of the Children's Creativity Museum in San Francisco, California.
In work and in life, Melissa is a genuine relationship builder and a strong believer in the power of mutually beneficial collaborations to realize profound change
