Melissa Duclos

About Melissa Duclos

I’m the founder and principal at Amplify Impact, which offers courageous marketing for progressive change makers. My clients at Amplify includeauthors, nonprofit organizations, and mission-driven companies advancing equity and justice, fostering the arts, transforming educations systems, and building community capacity. At Amplify Impact, I collaborate with other media professionals to offer branding & design, podcast production, media buying, content creation, earned media strategy & ghost writing, and public relations My experience spans the fields of writing and education. I’ve worked as a college writing instructor, high school literacy coach, developmental and copy editor of social science and education research, director of a tutoring company, and in communications and development for an early childhood advocacy organization. In my most recent position I managed marketing strategy for K12 professional development books related to equity, school improvement, and professional learning. I’m the author of the novel Besotted (7.13 Books, 2019). My personal essays and journalism have appeared in The Washington Post, The Offing, Salon, and Electric Literature among other venues. My essay published the day after the Umpqua Community College was recognized as Salon\'s Best of 2015 and led to an interview on CNN. I’m the co-founder of Amplify Writing, a volunteer project that seeks to support the career development of writers with lived experiences, identities, and backgrounds that are underrepresented in the publishing ecosystem. Through Amplify Writers I received grant funding in 2022 to conduct a community needs assessment around professional development support for writers. I’m currently working with a group of middle school writers to produce a public event for students interested in careers in writing and publishing.

Experience

1. Principal

   Amplify Impact

   Feb 2026 — Present

   At Amplify Impact, I offer marketing strategy consulting and campaign content creation to authors, nonprofits, and mission-driven companies. A published novelist and essayist with an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and a decade of college-level teaching experience, I bring a deep understanding of narrative and writing instructional techniques to my work enabling clients to tell their own stories of impact.

Education

• University of Pennsylvania

  BACHELOR OF ARTS, ENGLISH; Creative Writing

  1997 — 2001

• Phillips Exeter Academy

  High School Diploma

  1993 — 1997

• Columbia University, School of the Arts

  MASTER OF FINE ARTS, CREATIVE WRITING; Fiction

  2006 — 2009