Welcome to 4xi's latest team member, Melanie Corey-Ferrini, a world-class strategy, design, and innovation expert adding Design for Life: Human Experience (HX) design to our capabilities focused on People, Place, and Purpose.
4xi: Our strength is in the power of our collective.
Melanie has managed innovative and complex projects and diverse teams around the globe. She creates strategic high-impact solutions from the beginning of an idea and through to completion.
She has worked with some of the largest and most innovative companies driving, planning, and executing extraordinary experiences in workplaces, shopping centers, mixed-use facilities, and campuses.
Her ability to balance real estate feasibility and facilities with future thinking and multi-use planned concepts is an outcome of her architectural, construction, real estate assessment, brand, and design expertise.
Melanie creates award-winning food and retail concepts for a variety of industries including; Business & Industry, Corporate & Retail Development, Senior Living & Higher Education industries.
With over 20 years of project management and design, feasibility and strategy, brand and user experience, site and space programming, and planning, Melanie works with owners, operators, and teams to steer the project to the finish line. Melanie leads the planning and program integration of sustainable nourishing infrastructure into collaborative and amenity spaces.
Melanie is passionate about our food systems. She has created amenity spaces integrating indoor controlled environmental agricultural systems (CEA) into project planning, as well as zero waste and community partnership solutions. She believes that designing for a circular economy approach provides resilience in our local foodservice, systems, as well as successful integration into real estate planning.
Melanie is an NCARB nationally certified architect and FCSI Food Consultant.
Melanie received her Next Economy MBA through Lift Economy and her BS in Architecture from California Polytechnic University, Pomona. She was previously a commercially certified appraiser overseeing major feasibility projects for financial institutions and developers.
She is an active member of the Society for Hospitality Management (SHFM), Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), Farm Tech Society (FTS), and works with community organizations supporting women and girls’ education. Melanie has created industry and corporate ideation workshops and has spoken at numerous workplace, retail, food, and industry conferences.
Welcome on board Melanie, and here's to getting Up Close & Personal:
Q1: Where do you live?
MCF: Seattle, Washington.
Q2: What was your journey to 4xi?
MCF: After a career in real estate analysis, founding and operating a design, architecture, and strategy company for 20 years, an indoor farm collaborative, and project management for food entrepreneurs, it was time to utilize all my expertise with a group of experts in their own areas of experience creation.
Working with a diverse and innovative team like 4xi was what I was looking for to utilize all my expertise. I’d met Simon and Barbara at industry events over the past 5 years or so and really felt that they understood what it takes to create innovative and optimal multi-user experiences. Working with multi-stakeholder groups to create innovative, sustainable, and successful experiences is what led me to 4xi.
Q3: What’s your favorite holiday destination?
MCF: That’s a hard one since I have traveled throughout the globe and really love so many places. I really enjoy places that are so different than my own day-to-day. I enjoy places I have never been to and the more unique and far afield, the better. Madeira and the Azores in Portugal are some of my favorites.
Q4: Desert Island Discs: What are your top 3 music artists?
MCF: Anything Disco! I like classical music too, Adagio for Strings is one of my favorites. I also like the Beach Boys.
Q5: Desert Island Food: What are your top 3 cuisines or foods?
MCF: I love Italian, Asian, and most importantly, dessert!
Q6: If you were invited to a dinner party of 10, who would you invite?
MCF: It would depend on who was throwing the party and the occasion, I would want to bring someone who was a charming conversationalist, who was wise and had life experiences that would be engaging for the other guests.
If my guest were a fantasy +1 choice, then multiple people come to mind both alive and not:
David Chang, American restaurateur, founder of the Momofuku restaurant group
Danielle Nierenberg, President Food Tank, an expert on sustainable agriculture
Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists of all time
Jacques Cousteau, French explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, and scientist
Gandhi
The cast from Monty Python
Irving Fain, CEO of an agricultural tech start-up, Bowery
Michaelangelo
Zahid Hadid, Iraqi-British architect
Irsa Hirsi, American environmental activist
Q7: What are the three most important things top of mind as you think about Designs for Life?
Future-proof to stand the test of time and evolution
Sustainable to protect our planet for future generations
Technology to connect users with amenities, events, and learning experiences
Q8: The most influential person, leader, icon, colleague in your career to date?
MCF: I would say the company – IDEO – they have stayed in front and ahead of why thoughtful design matters and how to think about it in everything we do.
Q9: If you could change one thing, anything, what would it be?
MCF: Healthy, sustainable, and local food access for all.
Q10: Describe your best consumer experience ever, and why it stands out?
MCF: A food tour that I took in New York. Attention to detail integrated unexpected stops and brought together diverse and like-minded people.
Q11. Tell us something about you that most people don't know about you?
MCF: I am a paraglider and open water swimmer. (See video below of Melanie in action)
Q12. If you support a charity, what is it and why?
MCF: Indoor Farm Collaborative and Soroptimist Seattle. IFC is a multi-stakeholder organization that creates indoor farm training and education for youth and adults facing food access problems. Food access for all and providing tools to grow your own healthy food in urban areas with less arable land is an important part of a circular resilient community. Soroptimist Seattle provides women and girls education scholarships. Access to education is important for underserved populations.
Q13. If you could live in any book, what would it be?
MCF: Curious George, because he likes asking questions, and sometimes it seems you can’t get away with being curious as an adult.
Q14. If you could have superpowers, what would they be?
MCF: Live underwater – and fly like a flying fish or dolphin.
Q15. What inspires you?
MCF: The idea of programming innovative and successful multi-use spaces for all-day parts to satisfy the human curiosity for varied experiences - that's what we call Design for Life - creating experiences that come to life - People, Place, and Purpose.
I also love working with and growing on my indoor farm, sketching and traveling, and my grandkids!
Thanks, Melanie, and welcome on board!
Melanie joins 4xi as a leader in innovative design strategy.
DESIGN FOR LIFE is focused on advancing the Human Experience (HX) for people away from home - at work, in education, at rest, or at leisure - focused on:
PEOPLE, PLACE, and PURPOSE.
To learn more about Melanie download her BIO HERE, or you can contact Melanie directly to learn more at melanie@4xiconsulting.com
4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side creating an impact in the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure.
We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy, whether client, employee or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success.
We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators:
Strategic Advisory
Amenities, Design & Operations
Customer Experience (CX)
Training & Development
Strategic Partnership & Growth
Innovation
Solutions & Support
Our Strength is in the Power of Our Collective.
4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy.
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