Melanie Sage, PhD has a PhD in social work and a black belt in the art of friendly persuasion. A licensed social worker with 20 years of experience, Dr. Sage has been a professor at a research university in Buffalo, NY, where she still teaches part-time, and a senior user experience researcher on the equity team at Meta.
Besides gaining experience as a mental health practitioner, Dr. Sage has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and delivered over 100 presentations on the nexus between well-being and technology, as well as conference keynotes.
Her goals at Resilient Moment are to ensure that the tools are usable, informed by user inputs, and can be applied in ways that improve well-being across diverse audiences while maintaining strict data privacy.
Melanie Sage knows that social work grounded in social justice gets better results. It pays to focus on individuals, understand what they most need from an app, and seek solutions to improve their well-being. She had the perfect role model: her mother, a compassionate social worker and an inspiring example.
Dr. Sage is proud of how far she’s come, from teen mom to doctoral researcher: “Getting my PhD was a pretty big deal,” she says. “My son was born when I was 18. I graduated from a continuation school. I went to a community college and never knew anyone with a PhD before I entered a PhD program myself. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. But I made it, and spent 11 years as a professor before I decided I wanted more freedom. Being able to leave academia after that long commitment to the PhD is something else that makes me proud.”
Over her academic career, she wrote grants for and was awarded over $5 million from federal and local agencies to conduct research on social work workforce well-being, the ethical use of technology, and community-based interventions.
She thinks the best thing she has ever done was being a good mom: “My adult kids are quirky, smart, creative, and resilient. There is no professional expertise or degree that adequately prepares a parent to see their own kids struggle. I have done many hard things in my life, but being a good mom was the hardest and most rewarding.”
These days she has three twentysomethings who share an apartment above her house and who are not above raiding her refrigerator--occasional depredations she indulges with a chuckle. She also has two happy dogs that she spoils rotten.
She likes P!nk, the singer whose message of women’s empowerment strikes a chord. She’s also a fan of HGTV’s Extreme Homes, having discovered the therapeutic benefits of furniture restoration. In her free time, Dr. Sage reupholsters chairs with bright, happy colors, repaints old furniture and turns faded heirlooms into fun works of art. If she had another shot at a career path, she says she’d open a mental health day treatment center where people could be in community and learn upholstery together. “I’d call it ReCovery,” she says cheekily.
