
Photo by Jeremy Kramer
Second Careers
From: State Social Worker
To: Design Director
At age 37, Vanessa Melendez found herself back in school, starting a five-year undergraduate program for industrial design. It wasn’t her first time in college—a self-described people-watcher drawn to human behavior, she secured her first degrees in psychology and sociology in the 1990s. “I wanted to help people,” she says. “I began my career working with at-risk youth in mental health units,” adding that her biggest passion was facilitating conflict resolution and creative self-expression groups. As her skills developed, Melendez helped youth integrate into new homes and family environments, leading her to a career in foster care, an opportunity she saw “to help kids find safety and security.”
Melendez’s people-focused approach to foster care led her to pursue opportunities in social work at the state level, “but that proved not for me,” she says. “I had to take a moment and reflect on what made my heart happy. It took me back to my time in direct care leading the creative self-expression groups. I found that I could blend my love for art with my love of helping people.”
At the time of this “mid-career crisis,” the agency Melendez worked for didn’t have an art therapist, so they let her develop a curriculum for creative self-expression inspired by art therapy. “That’s where I learned that the journey of making art is almost more important than the final piece,” she says. “Art can be used to tell your story in a way that words cannot.”
The experience was an “aha” moment for Melendez. After researching local programs, she found herself studying industrial design at the University of Cincinnati—a freshman again, “with a whole new plan.”
The program required six co-ops to graduate; Melendez completed five at P&G for design management and found her calling. Sixteen years later, she’s design director for P&G’s Transformative Technology Platform, which works on proprietary technologies for its family of brands. “I currently work on a product called EC30, a collection of dissolving cleaning products for body and home,” she says. “We are reimagining the world of liquids. No water. No plastic bottles. I love contributing to sustainability efforts and bringing exciting new forms to life.”
The connection between social work and brand design might seem tenuous, but Melendez counts many similarities between the two industries, including problem-solving and working with people. “Design is really about deep understanding of a consumer need,” she says. “In social work, I also needed to deeply understand challenges people were facing before we could propose solutions.”
And Melendez isn’t finished. “I’ve always been inspired by Sheryl Sandburg, who said her professional career was divided into three acts: nonprofit, corporate, and government,” she says. “I’ve done the first two and do feel that a third act is on my horizon. It definitely won’t be government, but something all my own that I have deep passion for.”
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