Testimonials
What others have to say
Some of the wonderful people Melissa has worked with who have gone on the journey of (re)designing their business model and using the rə://gen method.
“Melissa’s energy, eye for detail, empathy and experience have led me to believe she is a real world walking Wonder Woman! Within a short-time frame Melissa helped me craft the right business plan and strong brand positioning to attract investment and move forward into early stage market entry. Without her help I would have struggled to get to where I am now!” - Angus Brown, Founder Arepa
“Melissa has been a super power for me. Her frameworks are real gifts and she serves up gold for the team. She has this amazing way of getting to the core essence of any design or market question and builds up the process to help you make quality decisions. Her insights are world leading and I’ve loved spit-balling with her. It has led to a change in our agenda forward, and the results speak for themselves. She’s engaging, empathetic, purpose driven and challenging - and she cares deeply. ” - Andy Hamilton, CEO The Icehouse
“It is hard to express in words just how incredible my experience working with Melissa and her rə://gen program was. Her structured design-thinking and solid marketing background, combined with her knack for synthesizing my ideas has given me a solid base to completely redesign my business. It has truly exceeded all of my expectations — my new business strategy is grounded in research and deep thinking; driven by the dual goals of profitability and purpose. Incredibly useful for businesses of any size who are looking to pivot or redefine their strategy.” - Sophie Poelman, Founder Studio Alida
“Melissa’s expertise in design-led thinking is outstanding. Able to work with complexity, she is challenging, rigorous and super strategic. She has an incisive understanding of how an organization functions and its un-realized potential. Her process and approach was revelatory for me. I learnt that the way I thought the organization worked and delivered value was not correct. Both the challenge facing us and the opportunity, if we got it right, were bigger. We can be blind-sided by or just plain unaware of what is invisible to us. Her perspective and process brought this into sharp focus. Melissa operates at the top of her craft, and with the upmost integrity.” - Dr Sandy Callister, Board member World Vision
“Melissa helped us define our place in the world for our new business. We explored where we want to play, the unmet market need and importantly- our superpowers. A powerful and inspirational process thanks to Melissa's superpower of insight and a robust process. Highly recommended!” - Dr Sue Watson, Chair, Director and Founder of Leaderful
“Melissa was recruited to transform us into marketing led company which she completed with aplomb. She transformed our product ranges, our brand, our design, our communications… that will serve us for years to come. Her winning Marketing awards is a testament to this transformation. She is leaving behind a strong platform for future growth.” - Malcolm Rands, Founder ecostore
“Melissa is quite simply a world class design practitioner. Her work at World Vision has been critical to exposing core challenges and providing a clear strategic way forward. I'm consistently impressed with Melissa's ability to balance strategic and commercial demands within environments that are rapidly evolving.” - Abraham Gibson, Board Member World Vision
“Melissa is the real deal. Bundled in an effervescent parcel of infectious optimism, Melissa has a rare ability to cut through rhetoric and business myths to pinpoint the true strategic, commercial, problems. Melissa settles for nothing less than excellence. She has an enviable know-how on all aspects of modern business practice to add to her capabilities as a stunning marketer.” - Helen Carter, GM of Marketing and Business Development Skills NZ
“Melissa design thinking skills have been instrumental in helping us unlock our innovation potential. I first brought Melissa in as a strategic advisor back in 2014 and she’s helped our exec team off and on ever since. She has an uncanny ability to cut through big problems to identify what’s broken, what works and what can fly. She can see value potential and knows how to unlock it – both in the business and in people. I’d highly recommend her to any business leader wanting to reset and scale up their business.” - Richard Wyeth, CEO Miraka
“Melissa’s insight and decision making tools have been paramount in re-prioritizing our short and medium term strategies. Low risk, high return actions will ensure Textiles Alive not only remains a viable business, but will grow in a way that supports our staff and our clients. I would happily recommend the Regen Method, thanks Melissa!” - John Heyworth, CEO Textiles Alive
“Melissa is a real gem. A knowledge expert who’s inspiring, genuine and caring. I will have the design-thinking skills she gave me forever. She helped me break down problems into bite size pieces and work through the process in manageable chunks. It was a really powerful way of problem-solving - practical and real and you have something to show for it afterwards. The skills we learnt are helping us resolve wider issues at the root cause, rather than ‘solutions’ that require a whole lot of work but don’t actually hit the mark.” - Aleesha Price, HR Manager Miraka
“It was a real privilege to work with Melissa as I looked at transforming an idea into reality. She helped me discover potential I hadn’t even thought of. She has the unique ability to help connect the dots using her Regen Method which is a useful and easy framework to follow. This was hugely valuable for my business strategy and I’m so appreciative to her insights and energy.” - Jayne Chater, Founder Altris and Professionelle
I was fortunate enough to be selected to be part of design-led group sessions run by Melissa. I benefitted both personally and professionally from Melissa’s expertise, guidance and mindfulness. She listened and adapted to the group and by following her advice, I’ve been able to achieve significant wins.” - Warren, Sustainability Manager Miraka
“Melissa is one of the most talented marketers I work with. Her ability to think strategically while keeping her finger on the pulse on a daily basis is a real asset. Melissa has achieved outstanding marketing results for ecostore on the smell of an oily rag. She's a great communicator, a straight shooter with oodles of energy that is infectious.” - Niki Schuck, PR partner ecostore
“Melissa engages and builds trust with a wide range of people. She’s structured but flexible to adapt her approach. She cares for people and their problems. She was able to relate and understand what challenges people had and work through a path to arrive at a solution. She gave us simple takeaways that are easy to recall 12 months later.” - — Jason Te Brake, Commercial Manager Miraka
“Melissa is an holistic thinker. She combines what are typically thought of as 'fluffy' concepts with the 'hard' edges of frameworks and outputs – it’s magic combo. She provides our Masters entrepreneur students with a way to see, to move through the complexity and observe a system. Her frameworks help give order to the disorder and gets people unstuck. This is the key to momentum - forward motion. It's awesome! - Sarah Hindle, General Manager, Tech Futures Lab
“The design-led training Melissa took us through was invaluable. She gave us a totally new way of looking at problems and gaining solutions. She has this amazing ability to dig down to find the real, not perceived issues. She’s dynamic, empathetic and thoughtful. I’ve used what she taught us in my employment, my personal life and my studies. Using her techniques as resulted in winning the Miraka Auaha (Innovation) Award 2019, a new role, and 99% on my assignment. We have made some amazing changes just over lockdown and my new fellow colleagues are fast becoming enthusiasts as well! Thanks Melissa, I’m indebted to you. Forever an avid and loyal Design-Led supporter!!! #ravingfan #loyalsupporter” - Sheri Thomas, Miraka innovation champion