Melissa Long is delighted to join the 11Alive team as an anchor/reporter and call Atlanta home, once again.
Melissa first moved to Atlanta in 2005 to serve as an anchor/reporter with CNN, HLN and CNN.com. Prior to joining WXIA-TV, she served as an international business correspondent with Bloomberg TV in Manhattan, Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia. While living in the Asia-Pacific region, Melissa reported from the frenetic streets of Hong Kong, covered the historic shake-up in Australia's parliament, filed a story inside a diamond mine and reported along the longest golf course in the world.
At CNN, she contributed to coverage of the 2008 presidential election and reported on the major debates from the campaign trail, as well as the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and President Obama's inauguration. Melissa has anchored live breaking news of major news stories such as a execution of Saddam Hussein, President Ford's funeral and the daring rescue of hostages held for days by Somali pirates.
Melissa has also interviewed a diverse crowd of politicians, business leaders and celebrities, including: Vice President Joe Biden, WWE CEO Vince McMahon, Virgin's Richard Branson, Annie Leibovitz, Spike Lee, Jennifer Lopez, Il Divo, among others.
Earlier in her career, Melissa served as an anchor/reporter at TV stations in Rochester and Utica, New York. While living in Rochester, she was an adjunct communications professor at St. John Fisher College and wrote a personal finance column in the local paper.
Melissa has earned awards from the New York Associated Press and the New York State Broadcasters Association for her reports about heart disease and development in the Adirondacks. She was also presented with an award from the Radio Television Digital News Association for her series of stories on mental illness. In addition, Melissa was honored with a journalism fellowship in China through the East-West Center and awarded two journalism fellowships in Germany from RIAS.
Melissa is passionate about volunteering and has served as a mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters for 10 years. Most recently, while living and working in Manhattan, volunteered with the homeless. In addition, Melissa has merged her passion for volunteering and love of travel and spearheaded two international philanthropy projects with children in Singapore and Costa Rica. Years earlier, Melissa traveled to Atlanta to volunteer during the 1996 Olympic Games.
Melissa graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University with a dual degree in journalism and policy studies and earned an MBA from the Simon School at the University of Rochester. Melissa looks forward to putting her MBA to work covering stories about Georgia's economy and volunteering around metro-Atlanta.