Mel founded Luminate after almost a decade of working in high-pressure environments, where work-life balance and mental health were never treated as a priority. She experienced and witnessed high-stress levels, exhaustion and eventually burnout, which is when she came to the conclusion that looking after employees’ mental and physical health at work was the key to high performance and a thriving organisation.

She is a trained mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) teacher and a Mental Health First Aider. She has also completed the ASIST suicide prevention training.

She has a keen interest in break-through academic research in the field of mental health and, when she is not reading books and research in this area, she enjoys practicing yoga, cooking, hiking and working her way through the London restaurant scene.