Melissa Landis, Instructional Designer, Facilitator, Nature Enthusiast.

Elevate Palm Beach has been 15 years in the making. It all started with a girl who wanted to get out of her comfort zone and landing unexpectedly in a college position as a student facilitator at what is now The University of Lynchburg. Through this experience, I learned what it truly meant to be on an effective team and connect to the world around us.

Upon graduation I set out into the world with my passion for experiential education and my need to work in the outdoors. This brought me to start a master’s degree program in adventure therapy where I furthered my understanding on the positive effects nature has to our overall well-being. I worked part-time on this degree for two years and obtained a position at an addiction treatment facility where I was a group coordinator for two years. I created and facilitated their outdoor experiences and welcomed their challenge of, “What does this have to do with my recovery?” During my time there I realized that my path was not in counseling, but in creating something much bigger. I left the area of counseling and obtained my MBA in Entrepreneurship from Lynn University.

With my MBA I started Elevate Palm Beach. It started out as just a place for corporate team building workshop, but I still felt that it could be something much bigger. Now, I have started my Ph.D. in Sustainable Education at Prescott College. In tandem with this degree, I hope to make Elevate Palm Beach a bridge to help people reconnect with themselves, each other, and the planet. Through my intentional workshops, programs, and events I will redefine how people see sustainability. It is so much bigger than just ‘going green’, planting a garden, recycling, or using single-use plastics. True sustainability is our relationships with one another. It is how we conduct business, how we educate our youth; it’s the interconnections of all parts of the system and the understanding that we are the cause and effect of all parts of that system by our perspectives, habits, and behaviors.

I know change does not happen overnight. We have ingrained habits and behaviors we need to explore. My hope is to at least plant the seed, to allow a space for safe and open discussion on change.