Melissa Mykal Batalin is a strategic leader who creates experiences that drive meaningful connections.
Work Experience
Noodle
Vice President, Marketing & Enrollment: Strategy & Delivery 05.2025-Present
- Provide vision and strategy for marketing and enrollment tech needs to maximize performance and user experience
- Develop and continually evolve Noodle’s menu of strategic product, marketing and recruitment services
- Oversee a team of more than forty full-time employees and contractors, and achieved a team satisfaction rate twenty points higher than the company average
Associate Vice President, Student Experience Strategy 11.2022-05.2025
- Quantified the value proposition of products and opportunity size to prioritize product or service improvements amid competitive dynamics to identify key opportunities; worked with leadership, service leads and developers to make trade offs on product requirements
- Facilitated discovery discussions with marketing and enrollment stakeholders, broke down complex business issues into digestible requirements for stakeholder, product, design, and development teams
- Advocated on behalf of students throughout the entire span of the consumer journey — from awareness to up sell and retention, turning pains and problems into user-centered requirements adhering to best practices
Managing Director, Product Development 08.2021-11.2022
- Developed short and long-range product strategies for recruitment services; designed and drove the implementation of service-as-product solutions to meet emerging and future marketing and enrollment trends
- Collaborated with team leadership to codify best practices; worked with operations to ensure that tested, proven tactics are shared across the portfolio; and fostered a culture of continuous improvement that encourages new ideas and intelligent risk taking
- Provided input into pricing strategy for service products to ensure revenue will support required resourcing; provided feedback on optimal org design and roles
Vernal
Lifecycle Marketing Strategy Consulting 03.2020-08.2021
- Advised higher education marketing teams on integrated tactics and created strategies that find, nurture and enroll right-fit students
- Lead transitions from transactional to relationship-based strategies that leverage brand and content as the center of their consumer (student) journey
- Re-developed the look, feel and tone of university and school brands through stakeholder surveys, design thinking sessions, meetings and presentations, and oversaw the roll out and relaunch of the university brands
- Partnered with marketing leadership to create marketing strategy presentations, reporting cadences, content calendars (news, faculty expertise, recruitment articles podcasts) and implement project management systems
HotChalk (part of Bertelsmann Education Group)
Vice President, Experience Strategy & Design 03.2019-03.2020
- Defined the strategy for consumer experiences across all channels, ensuring alignment with company-wide strategy
- Coached and mentored remote, in-house and consulting team members (designers, writers, developers, community managers, content publishers, media strategists) ensuring they were collaborative and customer-focused
- Utilized the full spectrum of design disciplines (design research, experience strategy, content strategy, information architecture, visual design, etc.) to improve customer experiences from awareness to graduation and beyond
Director, Engagement Strategy & Experience Design 03.2018-03.2019
- Worked closely with stakeholders throughout the organization to prioritize and communicate high-level business, media and marketing strategies to translate briefs into incredible experiences that won consumers
- Developed scenarios, user flows, interaction models, wire frames and prototypes to create ideal user experiences
- Lead product initiatives from the research to sketch through mock-ups to implementation and on to optimization
Associate Creative Director, Experience 05.2017-03.2018
- Articulated and visualized experience concepts to champion the needs of the target audience—educated internal constituencies, translated requirements and limitations while advocating for simple, authentic solutions
- Lead design thinking sessions with tech and creative teams (as well as clients) to push beyond typical solutions
Creative Communication Associates
Design Integration Director 05.2016-05.2017
- Partnered with key players across the agency (research, account, media, digital and creative) to determine strategic needs and growth opportunities to bring differentiated experiences to life in a variety of mediums and platforms
- Identified trends and provided cross-functional teams insight on higher ed brands successfully connect with students
- Worked with developers to translate design comps to code—creating award-winning, responsive experiences
Education
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduated with honors
- B.S. in Electronic Media, Arts and Communication: Design & Digital Imaging
- Certificate in Communication Design
Cornell University
- Change Management Certificate
References
Available upon request