Melissa Eggleston serves as a user experience researcher and designer for the Digital Service at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare. Her specialty is applying trauma-informed principles to the design process and products. For more than 15 years, she has improved the user experience of websites, apps, and software for organizations of all sizes, including Lenovo, Duke University, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Teamworks, and many others. In 2023 she won the Service to the Citizen Customer Experience Trailblazer Award for her work on 988 (the U.S. suicide hotline) and related websites. In 2017 she won the Aquent Design for Good grant to apply trauma-informed principles to a domestic violence agency website.

She has helped design specifically for people who have experienced interpersonal violence, human trafficking, substance use disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidal ideation, and serious mental illness. In 2009, Melissa received her MA in Communication from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she has taught UX design since 2019. At North Carolina State University now, Melissa is pursuing a doctorate in design, studying the intersection of technology and trauma.