Melissa L. Bradley is a tri-sector leader with more than 20 years of entrepreneurship, investment and leadership experience. She is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sidecar Social Finance, a social impact agency that provides impact investing advisory and capital services to individuals, institutions, and social enterprises. She is also Founder and Curator of Venture DC/Project 500, a DC-based project that seeks to create equity and opportunity in entrepreneurship through the training and visibility of diverse entrepreneurs aimed at bridging the literal and figurative innovation divide in the city.
During the summer of 2016 Melissa was named as a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. In September 2016, Melissa was named Co-Chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE) by Secretary Penny Pritzker from the Department of Commerce. In December of 2016 she was named to Mayor Bowser’s Innovation and Technology Inclusion Council (ITIC).
From 2015 to 2017 Melissa served as Executive in Residence in the Management Department at the Kogod School of Business at American University. During her tenure at AU she was awarded the Anne S. Ferren Award for Curriculum Design and completed her Certificate for Online Teaching and Learning. In Spring 2016 Melissa became the founder and inaugural director of the AU Center for Innovation in the Capital at the University. The mission of the Center is to develop and leverage innovation and entrepreneurship in training, application and research to catalyze a new generation of leaders inside and beyond the capital region.
Bradley has served as a Presidential Appointee under President Obama from 2012-2015. She served as Chief Strategy Officer at the Corporation for National and Community Service, served at the Department of Education and was responsible for securing over $20 million in public-private partnerships to support national service and My Brother’s Keeper. From 2014-2015 she served as Acting Director of the Social Innovation Fund, a White House Initiative committed to scaling ‘what works’ in our communities.
Since 2012 Melissa has been a Professor of Practice at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University where she serves as an expert lecturer on Impact Investing, Social Entrepreneurship, Peer-to-Peer Economies and Innovation. In 2015 she was awarded the Entrepreneurial Faculty Excellence Award and the Joseph F. LeMoine Award for Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching Excellence and in 2016 she was awarded the MBA Excellence in Teaching Award.
Melissa currently serves as an Advisor to the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program, Wallet AI, the Center for the Advancement of Social Enterprise (CASE) at Duke University, and LGBTQ Center at Georgetown University. She is a Founding Advisor to the Dell Center for Entrepreneurs as well as a Senator with the Board of Governors at Georgetown University. She is also Founder and Former Chair of the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Alliance and was a Founding Member, The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.
Melissa holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Finance from the School of Business at Georgetown University, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration in Marketing from American University Kogod School of Business.