Melvette C. Hill is a dedicated civic leader, advocate, and expert in community engagement and dual-capacity building with over 25 years of experience spanning corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. Her work centers on civic engagement, leadership development, and public policy, with a focus on advancing equity and opportunity for families and children. Melvette’s primary calling and leadership style is servant leadership.
Melvette serves as the Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity, and Opportunity (CWCSEO) a non-partisan agency of the Connecticut General Assembly. In this role, she provides strategic leadership, leading a team committed to fostering inclusive, data-driven policy innovation. Through statutory requirements, CWCSEO convenes and participates on more than forty advisories, councils and workgroups and serves on additional forty-five more. Melvette champions initiatives that promote best practices, reduce barriers, and create a more equitable and accessible Connecticut for all residents.
Melvette is a recognized thought leader advising at the community, agency, and state government levels and has led various high-impact projects. Throughout her career, Melvette has collaborated nationally with various organizations including the Administration for Children and Families, the Aspen Institute’s Ascend and Weave the Social Fabric, the American Public Human Services Association and National Conference for State Legislatures. She has led efforts focusing on child care, child tax credits, benefits cliffs, and the 2Gen approach, emphasizing strengthening families by simultaneously supporting parents and children ensuring they are partners at decision-making tables. Additionally, Melvette is passionate about communicating the impact, challenges and opportunities artificial intelligence and quantum computing technology bring to Connecticut environment, residents and economic landscape.
Prior to her current role, Melvette was associate director of parent leadership and family engagement focusing on policies that affected families and leadership of the Parent Leadership Training Institute (PLTI) for 8 years at CWCSEO. This free 20-week initiative created in 1992, guides parents through a leadership development pathway while building democracy and civic engagement skills. Offering vital supports such as childcare, meals, and transportation removed barriers to parents’ participation. PLTI has been implemented in 19 cities and towns throughout the state. It is where Melvette’s civic engagement took shape in Connecticut as a 2004 graduate of this now nationwide movement that boasts over 10,000 alumni. For years she has worked closely with the National Parent Leadership Institute, (the national replication arm of PLTI) on national policy initiatives to elevate parent voice and systemic change, including designing a parent policy table – a bi-monthly moderated panel of parent leaders addressing policy issues inviting state and national leaders to respond with insights and action.
Prior to her career in government, Melvette has had various roles in finance and marketing. Her time at brand leaders Babies”R”Us and Toys”R”Us were impactful as she progressed through the ranks quickly as a local marketer later leading the national field marketing team. While she loves marketing, her gift is problem solving which is evidenced by her diverse education which includes engineering, human resource management and theology.
Born and raised in Harlem, New York, Melvette’s early experiences in a richly diverse yet segregated city continue to fuel her passion for access, equity and civic engagement. Residing in Danbury, CT for over 30 years now with her husband, she is the mother of four grown children and grandmother to two grandsons.
