Originally from Philadelphia and South Jersey, Melissa Roshko Randall is a writer and aspiring cultural anthropologist. She got her start in writing after graduating from Temple University in 2010 with a degree in Film and Media Arts. While working on her original “bucket list blog,” she connected with actress Sophia Bush, and as a result, appeared in a season seven episode of One Tree Hill. Ironically, she’d go on to purchase a home in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the show was filmed.

Identifying as both a Northerner and a Southerner, she’s solo traveled to over 20 countries in Europe, Asia, and South America. Her favorite travel experiences include meeting and exploring Chile with a documentary filmmaker, hitchhiking around the Ring Road in Iceland, taking an overnight train from Kyiv to Lviv, and nearly not coming home from Tokyo. She recently did a road trip around Scotland.

Currently pursuing her dual MA in Food Studies and MSLIS in Library Science at New York University, Melissa was the Copywriter and Content Strategist for the New York Film Academy in Manhattan for five years. She currently works for Columbia Business School as a Digital Copywriter. As the Sr. Editor of Bite Magazine, a digital publication from the Food Studies Graduate Society at NYU, Melissa prides herself on curating creative writing about food culture, systems, and stories. She is also the Editor-in-Chief and website manager of her blogs, Driftyland and Ukraine Abroad.

A Fall 2023 Gardiner Foundation Fellow, as well as a Reilley Professional Achievement Scholarship Recipient and Steinhardt Graduate Scholarship Recipient, Melissa also created a digital food zine for an internship with NYU Bobst. She is the 2024/25 Junior Fellow for the Carl Safina Center, an organization dedicated to protecting air, climate, oceans, water, lands, and wild species. Previously, she managed the website content and social media for Hillingdon Food Stories out of SOAS University in London (2022-2023). One of her travel essays, Very Very, was chosen to be published in a book of essays, Enter Stage Write.

She has written travel essays, as well as content for B2Bs and B2Cs, including Fork Farms, Digital Momentum, Lean Labs, Hive Media, Method Savvy, The Queensboro Shirt Company, and Empire Covers. Her interests include genealogy, travel, film, thrifting, photography, and cooking. If she could host a dinner party and invite anyone, dead or alive, she’d be dining with Anthony Bourdain, Walter Matthau, her grandmother, Anne Marie Tendler, Chaïm Soutine, and her high school English teacher.

Her aspirations include publishing a book, flying an airplane (update: she did it!), spending a year in another country, and adopting a child. She frequently travels to New York City, and Wilmington, NC, residing in Philadelphia with her fiance, Tim, and his adorable corgi, Comet. She has a dog, Morrie, and a cat, Gus.