Melissa in the News
The Healing Power of Love (Island)
She’s growing up in a world that believes the false binary: Ugliness means evil, and beauty means good. Now my daughter is four. She points to Halloween decorations and asks, “Are you a witch?” “No, my love,” I answer. “Your mama is a human.”
Finding Beauty and Strength in Disability and Disfigurement
"Wiley is the only disabled woman in an executive-level government role in the entire nation and that fact alone deserves recognition. We reached out to the wider disability community and found an incredibly receptive and helpful group of people who helped make this vision come to life."
How Peak Performance Is Taking Denver Employees to New Heights
“We needed an innovative way to get at old vestiges of thinking in city government. We want a city built for 2016, not 1916.” The result was Peak Performance, which is winning awards and accolades around the county.
2024 Share Your Rare at Meadowlark K-8
"On International Women’s Day – This is a fitting day to be sharing with our community the efforts that were made by our school staff, parents, and this “Remarkable” Deputy Town Manager for Erie, Melissa Wiley, to come visit Meadowlark School to speak to our students."
No. 9 Top Local Government Influencer for 2022: Melissa Wiley
"The world needs more Melissa Wileys; we’d all be better for it. Her willingness to have genuine, difficult, meaningful conversations is exactly what local government needs, especially today. She radiates joy in all that she does, in and out of City Hall."
Denver’s Peak Academy practices what it preaches—and pivots
“We’ve told people for years to not be afraid to change, to not be afraid to completely redo everything you’re doing,” explained Peak Academy Manager Melissa Wiley. “And then when it happened to us, we as a team had to take our own medicine. It gave us a lot of empathy for what other people feel when we teach this.”
Meet Melissa
In this video, we talk with Melissa Wiley, Deputy Town Manager for the Town of Erie, about her Japanese heritage and growing up with a visible disability.
Melissa's Written Work
WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP: The Pressure of Pretty
Women can do anything. As long as we’re pretty. Not too pretty, but pretty enough. Because too pretty is threatening. I didn’t make the rules and neither did you. We just live them.
Everyone Has a Story: Healing Macro Systems Through Micro Relationships
"More sure of ourselves and our own righteousness, but less sure of others. Every person I know thinks they are right and a “good person.” Every person I know also thinks that someone else is to blame for all that is wrong with the world."
GOLDEN REPAIR: A DISFIGURED MOM’S QUEST TO RAISE A MORE LOVING CHILD
"I stood in front of the grocery store with my daughter. The automatic doors opened and closed but I didn’t move. My baby smiled. Too young to know that she is beautiful but her mother is disfigured."
Her Broken English
"In the morning, she took the night’s soaked-rice pot to the backyard and dumped the loosened grains. Then she stretched her arms toward the sun. Her daily rejoicing ritual. To the wonderment of God."