Milios Davis - Gates Family Foundation
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Melissa Milios Davis

Melissa Milios Davis

Vice President – Strategic Communications & Informed Communities

mdavis@gatesfamilyfoundation.org  |  (303) 316-3016

Melissa joined Gates Family Foundation in May 2017. Her primary role is to bring greater visibility to the work of the Foundation’s grantees and partners, to facilitate knowledge sharing, and to amplify the quality of life issues and ideas of greatest concern to the Foundation and Coloradans. In early 2019, she also took on a new role as program officer for Informed Communities and since January 2020 has served as Director of the Colorado Media Project.

Melissa brings more than two decades of collective experience in strategic communications, journalism, fundraising, coalition building, strategic planning and nonprofit management. Prior to joining Gates, she served as Director of Institutional Giving for BakerRipley, Texas’ largest community development agency, where she led foundation and corporate fundraising and helped executive leaders successfully close the first phase of a $50 million capital campaign to build a new, 7-acre multi-service community center in a chronically under-served Houston neighborhood. Prior to that, she spent seven years as a director of communications, marketing, public policy and fundraising for Houston A+ Challenge, a nonprofit organization working to improve student success in the Greater Houston region’s public schools, and year as communications director for the school board president of Los Angeles Unified School District (during the tenure of then-superintendent Roy Romer).

Melissa’s decade as a journalist included award-winning education beat coverage for the Daily Breeze newspaper in Los Angeles, breaking news and digital content production for the Austin American-Statesman and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and public radio news production for the Voice of America in London and both NPR stations (KCRW and KPCC) in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, an M.A. in journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, and a certificate in Comprehensive Fund Development from Rice University’s Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Management. She serves on the Membership Committee for Media Impact Funders, on the public policy committee for Philanthropy Colorado, on the leadership team for ComNetworkDENVER, and was a founding board member of the Colorado News Collaborative.


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