Melissa Ludwig is an insightful, strategic board director with public consumer-products company board and executive experience. A nimble problem solver with an accomplished, long-standing business leadership career in retail having direct profit-and-loss accountability up to $600 million and leading high-performing, multidisciplinary organizations ranging in size up to 3,000 employees. Ludwig brings deep expertise in strategic planning, expense initiatives, business to consumer, and risk management and has a record of building new capabilities to position businesses for responsible growth and sustained success while achieving the optimal customer experience.

With her deep governance experience, including as an experienced public company board director and board chair of the NACD Philadelphia Chapter, Ludwig seeks board opportunities where her corporate expert skills in strategy, corporate consulting, coaching, risk management, growth objectives, and diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as her understanding of consumer behaviors and experience can help lead to sustainable growth. She also is on the board of The Forum of Executive Women, chair of Women in Leadership, an active board member and chair of the nominating and governance committee at Girard College, on the director education advisory board of Drexel University's Raj & Kamla Gupta Governance Institute, an adjunct business professor at Villanova University, and the co-founder of the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator.

Ludwig is an angel investor and conducts due diligence to evaluate the investment viability of early-stage companies across the real estate, medical device, technology, and health-care industries. This work, along with Ludwig's passion for business innovation, has resulted in investments in the health-care and technology space and board advisory roles, providing leadership team counsel and networking advancements. As a trusted consultant and career advisor, Ludwig has also partnered with multiple consumer and life-science business entrepreneurs in the market developing organizational structuring, business planning, career strategies, and executive talent acquisition with a focus on women-founded companies.

As a senior and group vice president at Macy's, Ludwig led multiple mergers-and-acquisitions integrations and brand conversions, implemented technology innovations, and built omni-channel capabilities, launched new business operations, and restructured organizations maximizing efficiencies and performance. While serving as a valued leadership mentor, she advanced executive teams and steered organizations through significant business reinvention, transformation, and growth while mitigating financial, operational, and talent risk. Partnering with Bain & Co., Ludwig also led the successful pilot program for the corporation's business localization strategy, with decentralized merchandising and planning functions, paving the course for Macy's national operating model.

Throughout her Macy's career, Ludwig's leadership accountability spanned the New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, and Baltimore markets with direct vice-president-level executive teams and organizations across operations, merchandising, planning, visual, human resources, and asset protection. Prior to her senior executive appointments as the lead market expert, Ludwig served as the youngest and first female vice president in over 100 years to lead the iconic Macy's Herald Square 34th Street location in New York City where she steered a remarkable turnaround generating greater than $600 million in sales. She led Macy's in major metropolitan markets, including the restoration and market launch of the Center City location in Philadelphia. She has also cultivated a strong C-suite professional network, with long-standing relationships among the business, civic, and cultural communities.

Ludwig has served on numerous nonprofit organizations' boards, including for the Philadelphia Convention Visitors Bureau and ALS Association and as vice president of Susan G. Komen.

Ludwig earned her bachelor of science in industrial organizational and clinical counseling psychology from Moravian College (now University).