Melissa works for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where she manages media relations group for local, national, and international press for the foundation and its executives.  Her background is in public relations, media relations, community relations, public affairs, and television news broadcasting.

Prior to the Gates Foundation, Melissa spent six years as a consultant to private companies and organizations.  Before starting her consulting practice, Melissa led the technology public relations team of APCO Worldwide, where she provided strategic counsel, corporate positioning, media training, crisis communications, and media relations for a wide range of public and privately-held clients. Before APCO, Melissa worked with Waggener Edstrom, one of the world's largest high technology public relations firms and Microsoft’s agency of record.

Melissa's 12 years of television broadcasting experience includes anchoring, producing, reporting, writing, and editing for network affiliates representing ABC, NBC, and CBS.

She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Washington, and a Certificate in Public Relations for post-graduate work. She has won numerous awards for her work, including two Emmy Awards from the N.A.T.A.S. and a Totem Award from the P.R.S.A.

Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang is Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation, Chairman of Microsoft China Company Ltd.

Ya-Qin Zhang was the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, responsible for product development of Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Division, including WinCE operating system, Smartphone, PocketPC, and other Windows Mobile platform and devices. Before then he was the Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia, Microsoft’s basic research arm in Asia-Pacific region. From 1994 to 1999. he was the Director of Multimedia Technology Laboratory at Sarnoff Corporation in Princeton, NJ (RCA Laboratories). He was with GTE (now Verizon) Corp. in Waltham, MA from 1989 to 1994. He has published over 300 refereed papers in leading international conferences and journals. He has been granted over 50 US patents in digital video, Internet, multimedia, wireless and satellite communications. Many of the technologies he and his team developed have become the basis for start-up ventures, commercial products, and international standards. He serves on the Board of Directors of five high-tech IT companies.

Ya-Qin is a Fellow of IEEE. He served as the Editor-In-Chief for the IEEE Trans. on Video Technology and editorial boards of seven other professional journals and over a dozen conference committees. He has been a key contributor to the ISO/MPEG and ITU standardization efforts in digital video and multimedia.

Ya-Qin received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1983 and 1985. He received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University, Washington D.C. in 1989. He had executive business training from Harvard University.