Melissa Richmond

Chief Operations Officer

Melissa Richmond is Chief Operations Officer of Running Start, a Washington, DC based nonpartisan nonprofit organization that trains young women to run for political office. In her time at Running Start, Melissa has helped to triple the organization’s budget, staff size and programming and has been involved in training the youngest-ever elected officials in five states. Melissa regularly speaks to outside and international groups about the importance of getting more women into elected office. She has conducted trainings in more than fifteen states and in Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, Sierra Leone and Tunisia at the invitation of the UNDP and the State Department.

Prior to joining Running Start, Melissa worked for Senator Mitt Romney over the course of ten years, in the statehouse when he was Governor of Massachusetts, on both of his Political Action Committees, on his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, most notably as Director of Donor Relations, and on the SuperPAC that supported his second presidential run. Melissa graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in political science, the George Washington University Law School and the Campaign School at Yale. She was elected by a statewide convention of 5,000 people to serve as an Alternate Delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Melissa has been featured in/on BBC, NPR, NowThis, POLITICO, US News, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

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Melissa's LinkedIn