Melissa Simon
Melissa Simon joined The K12 Search Group in late 2017 as a Principal. She is a seasoned human capital leader and recruiter focused on cultivating talented people who will have a lasting impact on the organizations and communities they serve. Before joining The K12 Search Group, Melissa served as the National Director of Talent at Educators for Excellence. At E4E, Melissa led the organization’s talent work and grew the number of full-time employees by over 300%. She created and scaled all human capital systems and recruited, developed, and managed a full-time talent team. Before Educators for Excellence, Melissa worked in fundraising and recruitment for Teach For America, managing, coaching, and leading teams of development and recruitment professionals for over five years. As a recruiter and manager of a recruitment team at Teach For America, Melissa recruited over 700 corps members--leading the country with her results.
Melissa started her career as a Teach For America corps member. She taught middle school ESL and history in South Central Los Angeles, where she led her students to achieve an average of 2.2 years of reading growth and over 80% content mastery in history each year. Melissa was a national semi-finalist for the Sue Lehmann Excellence in Teaching Award.
Melissa is a 3rd-generation native of Manhattan Beach, CA, and holds a Master’s in Elementary Education from Loyola Marymount University and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban History and Immigration from the University of California, Berkeley (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa). When she isn’t reaching out to potential candidates and sources, she and her husband, Matt, are wrangling their two young daughters.