Melody Mann currently serves as the Director of K–12 Research & Account Support at SIEMBRA Mobile, where she leads strategic initiatives to ensure postsecondary readiness for students from historically underserved communities. In this role, she focuses on culturally responsive frameworks, inclusive data practices, and equity-centered approaches to promoting self-efficacy within diverse student and family groups in California.

Before stepping into this role, Melody held multiple positions supporting students with disabilities and multilingual learners through early childhood, K–12, and higher education systems. Her work has spanned transition services, IEP advocacy, and family-centered education models, with a particular focus on racially and linguistically marginalized communities. As a researcher and former special education practitioner, Melody brings a systems-level lens to the labor and advocacy work that caregivers, especially Punjabi families, navigate within disability services.

In higher education, Melody has worked as an instructor, researcher, and mentor across multiple universities, including in programs designed for first-generation students and students of color. She is currently completing her doctorate in Sociology, having previously earned two master’s degrees in education and disability studies. Her scholarship explores how disability and racial capitalism intersect, especially through policies that shift unpaid labor onto parents and caregivers in under-resourced public systems.

Melody has presented nationally on culturally sustaining pedagogy, inclusive literacy, and structural inequities in special education. Her policy research has been recognized for advancing community- engaged methodologies that challenge exclusionary practices in both scholarship and public policy.

Outside of academia and policy work, Melody is deeply involved in community-based research and advocacy within the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. She is committed to addressing the erasure of Punjabi families in South Asian discourse and elevating narratives at the intersection of disability, care, and faith.

She regularly collaborates with parent networks, early childhood educators, and advocacy groups to bridge research, practice, and community voice.