Melinda Knight
Co-Lead and Head of Product for Minecraft Education | Building Purpose-Driven Teams & Products That Inspire
- Role
- Director of Product at Mojang Studios
- Location
- Redmond, WA, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About Melinda Knight
I\'m a product leader with 20 years of experience building education, consumer, and enterprise solutions used by hundreds of millions worldwide. With strong UX roots—shaped by a decade leading UX Research teams—I bring deep customer insight to drive innovation, relevance, and business growth.As Director of Product for Minecraft Education, I set the strategic vision for the customer journey from awareness and acquisition to onboarding, customer support, and deep engagement. This work helped scale the platform to school systems in 140 countries, reaching over 300 million learners.My leadership style is grounded in clarity, trust, and accountability. I build empowered, collaborative teams that take ownership, tackle meaningful challenges, and deliver experiences people love. I coach PMs to lead with strategic intent and deep customer understanding—aligning product strategy with business goals and translating insight into solutions that expand reach, relevance, and impact.I’m passionate about crafting product experiences that inspire and empower—helping people learn, create, connect, and grow.
Experience
Director of Product
Oct 2021 — Present · Redmond, WA, US
Product Strategy & Innovation - Architect long-range roadmaps for academic and commercial channels to power immersive learning, reduce friction, and unlock new market opportunities. Led the strategy for Minecraft Education’s AI roadmap, helping educators overcome onboarding barriers and shaping the future of AI in learning.Team Leadership & Development - Attract, build, and grow empowered product teams with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Foster a bottoms-up culture where feature teams lead with strategic intent and deep customer insight, advocate for their ideas, and pursue robust points of view while seeking consensus.Execution & Delivery - Drive cross-functional planning and delivery across client, web, services, and customer support. Craft team topologies to support agile, empowered crews focused on outcomes over output.Customer-Centric Design - Embed user research, customer feedback loops, and experimentation into product development. Champion data-informed decision-making and hypothesis-driven development to ensure we are always learning.Cross-Org Collaboration & Evangelism - Build consensus across engineering, design, marketing, curriculum design, and business teams. Deliver inclusive, secure, and accessible products aligned with Microsoft’s cultural values and the Mojang brand. Market Expansion & Growth - Develop strategies for B2B, B2B2C, and direct-to-consumer offerings. Introduced product-led growth features to drive activation through demo and trial experiences, resulting in a 25% conversion increase.
Education
Iowa State University
Master of Science (MS), Mechanical Engineering
2001 — 2003
Iowa State University
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Human Computer Interaction
2003 — 2005
Iowa State University
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Engineering Science
1997 — 2001
Skills
- Heuristic Evaluation
- Mobile Applications
- User Experience
- Experience Design
- User Experience Design
- Usability Testing
- User Interface Design
- User Scenarios
- Interaction Design
- User Research
- Contextual Inquiry
- Agile Methodologies
- Human Computer Interaction
- Information Architecture
- User Interface
- User-Centered Design
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