Family is the center of everything for Melodee. A mother of three and a grandmother of two, she spent 15 years building a career in human resources before a sudden stroke brought her life to a crashing halt. Forced to step away from work and focus on recovery, she eventually faced a difficult truth: the career she’d built no longer fit her new reality. The memory-heavy responsibilities of processing payroll and retaining extensive client information were simply not feasible anymore.
Rather than give up, Melodee chose to pivot.
Through the grapevine, she heard about Skills for Chicago. She says after finding our website, “It was all up from there”. In a matter of weeks—not months, as so many job seekers experience—Melodee was settling into a new path at Northwestern Medicine as a Patient Access Representative. In this customer-facing role, she has found a richly rewarding place in the OBGYN department, supporting families at the very start of their own journeys. As a mother and grandmother herself, that connection hits deep. “We get to watch them go through their different stages of pregnancy from the beginning to the end, and see the babies coming in, and just see the little lives. You know, I love that.”
Today, she says what drives her most “is just life having life.” —a blessing she doesn’t take lightly. Whether she’s working, finishing her degree, or stepping outside her comfort zone for new adventures, Melodee embraces each day with renewed focus and gratitude. For her birthday this year, Melodee did something different: she closed her eyes, pointed to a map, and decided wherever her finger landed, that would be her next adventure. That small act landed her in Nashville for a well-earned vacay, and it also says a lot about who she is now: someone willing to trust the unknown and to keep reaching for what’s next.
That spirit informs the advice she offers others standing at the crossroads she once faced, “push yourself, open up your mind, your thoughts, your whole soul to a change. A possibility that you won’t be doing what you have been doing for the last 10-15 years. Be open to change, be open to constructive criticism if someone tells you, ‘Hey, I want you to interview like this… Dress like this.’ Have some goals set for yourself, and where you wanna go.”
Because sometimes, with daring resilience, the life you didn’t plan for can still be exactly where you’re meant to be.
But don’t take our word for it. As one of the featured voices of our 2025 Impact, she tells her story best. See for yourself below:
