Melissa Fornari is from Brazil, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English and Portuguese with a focus on language teaching. She has a master’s in Linguistics from Florida International University. Melissa has over 15 years of experience teaching English as a Second Language and Portuguese, working in Brazil and in the United States. In 2018, she moved permanently to Mendocino, and she started teaching at Mendocino College in the spring of 2019. Besides teaching ESL, she also serves the students as ESL Specialist and Program Assistant at the Coast Center, in Fort Bragg.