Melissa Clark-Reynolds

Melissa Clark-Reynolds ONZM is a New Zealand futurist, strategist and serial entrepreneur who has built and advised businesses across health, technology, gaming and governance.

Clark-Reynolds entered university at 15, the youngest woman to do so in New Zealand at the time. She graduated from Victoria University of Wellington with honours in anthropology (focusing on women’s health), then completed a combined master’s degree in environmental health, waste management and epidemiology at Rutgers University in the United States.

Her first venture, GMV Associates, was a health-and-safety and workers’ compensation consultancy that was sold to Southern Cross and became Fusion, New Zealand’s largest private workers’ compensation insurer. In 2009 she co-founded MiniMonos, an environmentally themed virtual world for children, with interactive media producer Deborah Todd and game designer Noah Falstein. The platform attracted close to one million players before closing in 2013.

Clark-Reynolds became a professional director in 2013 and has since developed and taught courses in strategy, digital governance and disruptive business models for the New Zealand Institute of Directors. In 2012 Forbes named her one of the top-ten female company founders to watch and in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the technology industry.

Clark-Reynolds’s profile is noteworthy because her career spans an unusually wide arc, from health-sector startups to children’s gaming to futures strategy and boardroom governance and her recognition by Forbes and the New Zealand honours system reflects a sustained contribution to the country’s technology and business landscape.

Melissa features in our look at the NZ women who redefined success on their own terms.

Sources: Wikipedia · Stuff · RNZ