About Us

Melissa King

Chief Operating Officer and Founding Board Member

Melissa King is a passionate advocate for patients of chronic illness and disease as well as the medical research that can help reduce their suffering. An expert at engaging multiple stakeholders and communicating effectively with varied audiences, she has been a champion for the California stem cell research program since before it formally existed.

Melissa was previously Executive Director of Americans for Cures, where she laid the groundwork for California Proposition 14, passed in 2020, and built the patient advocacy coalition needed to get the state ballot initiative passed. She was Head of Field Operations for the Prop 14 campaign, which secured an additional $5.5 Billion in funds for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Long before her work on Prop 14, Melissa served as a senior member of the successful 2004 campaign for California’s Proposition 71, which created CIRM and the California stem cell program. She hired the first several employees at CIRM to become the pioneers of the new state funding agency.

Melissa played a central role in the formation and building of CIRM, the unique $3 billion research funding agency created by Prop 71. During the first seven years of CIRM’s operation, she worked hand-in-hand with the Agency Chair and its founding 29-member governing Board responsible for setting the strategic vision for the agency. She guided CIRM’s founding Board through its first 1500+ hours of public meetings, the sale of the first bonds to fund the agency, as well as the development and awarding of the first billion dollars in grants.

Melissa is now focused on the vision of improved healthspan for all. She works to support the continued success of the research, ensuring that access and affordability of treatments is fully addressed, and the need for more diversity in science, medical research and clinical trials. She served as a volunteer mentor for SHE CAN, mentoring a young woman scholar from Liberia now attending graduate school in the US. She is a board member at Summit for Stem Cell Foundation and ShelterTech, serves as Chair of Regions for Wellesley College Friends of Art and is a member and past Chair of the Wellesley Business Leadership Council.

Melissa has a B.A. from Wellesley College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissajking1/