About Melanie Rice

Melanie Rice is the founder of Crux Strategic Communications with a 25 year passion for corporate and marketing communications. An employee engagement geek, marketing communication maven, obsessed Oregon Duck football fan and entrepreneur, she has directed communications teams at several Fortune 500 companies, including Molson Coors Brewing Company, Newmont Mining Corporation, H-P, Compaq and Tandem Computers. She has a B.S. in Quantitative Analysis from University of Oregon and a M.B.A. in Marketing from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

Melanie believes that life-long learning is fun, and effective and creative communications provides plenty of opportunities to listen, learn and grow. Her goal is to cut through the corporate speak and build authentic connections for companies and brands with their customers, employees, investors, partners and the press. She uses her vast experience with change communications to help clients navigate through tough times and maintain their sanity during the process.

As a kid, Melanie's first crush was on running legend Steve Prefontaine, and her Girl Scout leader was an avid outdoors woman who passed along her love of hiking, camping and backpacking. Now she ventures outside every chance she gets and lives by Steve's credo "to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the dream." 

Follow Melanie on Twitter@melanie_rice, Facebook and LinkedIn.