Youth Mentorship
I believe every young person carries a wild spark of creativity and wisdom that comes alive in nature. Through my youth mentorship programs, teens and tweens step away from screens and into the living world—where curiosity, play, and deep listening invite growth. Together we sit in nature, create art, share stories, and build the inner skills of resilience, self-trust, and belonging.
“Working alongside Meli for an entire school year in our middle-school drama therapy group was a master class in presence and care. Meli has a rare gift for holding a room of teens with both steadiness and playfulness. She tracks the subtlest shifts in group energy and responds in the moment—whether that means gently redirecting, inviting a burst of laughter, or opening space for deeper feeling. Her improvisational spirit is never careless; it’s rooted in keen listening and genuine attunement to each young person.
The containers Meli creates are at once safe and electric. Teens quickly sense that they can bring their full selves and that their stories will be honored. She meets them with humor and warmth while also setting a strong, clear frame that fosters responsibility and maturity. Over the year, I watched participants take creative risks, speak truths, and transform before our eyes. Meli’s ability to weave depth and lightness, to balance structure with spontaneity, is nothing short of inspiring. I would collaborate with her again in a heartbeat.”
— Erin Stacey Visslailli, AMFT
About Meli
Meli is an artist, arts educator, wilderness rites of passage guide, and aspiring therapist pursuing a MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She delights in helping young people connect with their true voice and facilitating spaces that foster joy, creativity, and a sense of belonging.
Meli has years of experience working closely with middle and high school students in both school and wilderness settings, supporting them through creative group experiences and one-on-one mentorship. She also leads expressive art workshops that help individuals quiet their inner critic and connect with their authentic creativity.
Passionate about rites of passage work, Meli has guided wilderness-based coming-of-age journeys for youth through organizations like Wilderness Torah and Northwestern University. She is dedicated to creating spaces where adolescents can be seen, heard, and supported as they navigate the transition into young adulthood.
Meli holds a Certificate of Fine Arts from the Marchutz School of Painting & Drawing and a BA in Anthropology from Northwestern University.
“Meli and I co-led a group of 15 teenagers over the course of a 2-day camping trip in the wilderness of Santa Cruz, CA. Throughout our time together Meli consistently showed up as supportive, effervescent, authentic and creative. She emanates calm confidence in her facilitation, instantly making students/participants feel at-ease and comfortable. She led the group in several nature-connection experiences that allowed the students to see with new eyes through using magnifying glasses to slow down and look closely at the magic of the wild world. Everytime the students returned, they were filled with awe and wonder! Meli was able to support the students in sharing about their experience in a beautifully facilitated share-circle where each person talked about what they noticed and how they connected with their senses.
On the last morning, Meli invited the students to consider how Archetypes play a role in their lives through the use of an archetype card deck. She encouraged them to consider which archetypes they were attracted to and repelled by. She confidently navigated potential land-mines of judgement, self-criticism, confusion and overwhelm that the students could have fallen into. With poise and confidence, Meli opened the door for the students to share around the tender topic of identity, while masterfully facilitating the conversation towards open-hearted and authentic sharing. She helped build a trusting container for the teenagers to share vulnerably -- not an easy task!
Meli's facilitation consistently invites a deep experience for people to connect to their intuitive, creative, wild-soul as well as offer opportunities to share from the heart. She walks her talk. She is a bridge-builder of trust and a beauty-maker extraordinaire. Her capacity to cultivate out-of-the-ordinary experiences using creativity as a tool shows how deeply devoted to her divine creative self she is -- which is powerfully contagious!"
-Caitlin Rose Wild, Facilitator and Wholeness Coach