Melisa Sanders

Melisa Betts Sanders is a licensed architect, urban designer and St. Louis native. Her work focuses on disinvested and BIPOC communities through advocacy and education and increasing the design pipeline for Students of Color. After several years of traditional practice in architecture, Melisa founded BlackArc, a design collaborative focusing on racial, economic, and social equity as a catalyst for community design. Much of her recent work centers on neighborhood advocacy, incorporating neighborhood identity into the built environment, and dismantling unjust systems of design and development.

Additionally, she’s a Lecturer at Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Architecture + Design and advises the school on diverse student recruitment and support issues. She is the incoming 2023 president of STLNOMA (National Organization for Minority Architects) and in 2019 she was named a Fellow of the Association for Community Design where she currently serves on the Board of Directors.