For over two decades, Melanie Ho has moved between two worlds that most people see as separate — the world of institutional leadership, where she's advised hundreds of college and university presidents and senior administrators on strategy, culture, and change; and the world of the imaginative arts, where she’s long believed that stories can illuminate what data and logical frameworks alone cannot. That dual life began at UCLA, where she earned her doctorate in English while serving in university leadership roles, and extended through twelve years as an executive at a leading education services firm, where she helped grow an internal startup from 30 staff to over a thousand while advising leaders at institutions worldwide.

When she founded Strategic Imagination in 2021, she stopped pretending those two worlds were separate. As a professional speaker and facilitator, she offers customized workshops, keynotes, and retreats that draw on the arts and storytelling to spark new insights, reflection, and change for leaders and teams. She also uses her creative approach to professional development in partnership with The Chronicle of Higher Education, leading The Chronicle's Women Leading Change and Leadership Transformation Collaborative for hundreds of higher ed leaders each semester. As an author and artist, her award-winning business novel Beyond Leaning In, and the dozens of webcomics she's hand-drawn based on scenes in the book, use the power of fiction and humor to help readers make sense of why gender gaps persist at work despite everyone's best intentions.

University of the Surreal was born out of a moment when the absurd stopped feeling like fiction — and when stories feel more necessary than ever.

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