Melissa Boteach

Washington, D.C.

Melissa Boteach is fast becoming one of the more public faces of the Mitchell Scholarship. At the Center for American Progress, she manages the organization’s Half in Ten program, designed to cut poverty in half in 10 years. In 2011, she was cited as one of Forbes magazine’s most influential “30 under 30” young leaders in the law and policy category and often comments on poverty issues in media outlets such as Fox News, The Washington Post, NPR, Newsweek, WNYC, and TheRoot.

Melissa was a Class of 2006 Mitchell Scholar, receiving a master’s in equality studies from University College Dublin. She later did a master's of public policy with a focus on budget and public finance at George Washington University and is a recipient of the Truman and Oppenheimer scholarships, both of which are oriented toward public service, as is the Mitchell.

During her undergraduate years at the University of Maryland, Melissa, a fluent Spanish speaker, traveled to Argentina to research social movements and unemployment in that country. Also as an undergraduate, she was active in the fair trade movement, and after her Mitchell year, she was a policy associate at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. She did two months of basic training with the Israeli military, and has participated in a dialogue between Jewish and Muslim women.

Whether her focus is US domestic poverty, international fair trade, Jewish-Muslim relations, or Latin American unemployment, Melissa to bear a keen understanding of the nuances and intricacies of policy.