About

Melissa Ⓥ Schwartz is a highly skilled software engineer with a passion for the open source community and free software movement. She has a strong interest in security, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, machine learning, information availability, and transparency. Melissa is an advocate for internet neutrality, election integrity, veganism, animal rights, and environmental protection. Melissa has given talks on various topics, including Data Extraction Challenges in the Modern Web at the Southern California Node/React Meetup and Democracy Counts Cross Platform Exit Auditing at California for Progress. She is also active on Github, where she can be found under the username melissjs. Currently, Melissa is the owner of schwartzstudios, a West Los Angeles-based photography studio that specializes in modeling, boudoir, fitness, and headshot photography. She has worked with a partial company and celebrity client list, which is available upon request. Previously, Melissa was a System Architect and Co-Creator at Vegan Revolution, an animal rights-focused social network and e-commerce site. Her responsibilities included developing all sharable social media content highlighting vegan celebrities, athletes, and nutritionists while facilitating relationships between vegan health professionals and clients. She also developed apparel, jewelry, cosmetics, print publication products, and Drupal-based social networks. Melissa was also a Lead Front End Software Engineer at Democracy Counts SameDay Election Audits. She led a small team that developed a cross-platform Ionic mobile app accessible to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone users, allowing volunteers to organize and audit polling stations during elections. The app was beta-tested in California and Arizona during the 2016 primary and general election. Melissa has a Bachelor's degree in Cinematography and Film/Video Production from the University of Southern California. She also has a degree in Computer Software Engineering from California State University, Northridge, and Santa Monica College. Melissa has 15.96 years of relevant experience, with a tech stack that includes Software Engineering, Blockchain, AWS, Web, ML, Redux, Backend, Javascript, Frontend, Android, iOS, and Mobile. She is a highly motivated and skilled software engineer with a passion for creating innovative solutions and contributing to the open-source community.