Director, University Ceremonies/Protocol Officer
Arizona State University

Melissa Werner is Director of University Ceremonies and Protocol Officer at Arizona State University and co-founder of the North American Association of Commencement Officers (NAACO).

A native of Tempe, Arizona and a long-time employee of ASU, Melissa has held positions as an academic advisor, program coordinator, development officer and event planner.

In May 2009 ASU hosted the largest graduation ceremony in the United States. More than 68,000 people attended ASU’s Spring Commencement at which President Barack Obama gave the first graduation address of his presidency.

In 1999 Melissa and Carol Switzer (1944-2011), co-founded the North American Association of Commencement Officers, a professional association for commencement and graduation professionals from across the United States and Canada. The need for such an association was confirmed by the tremendous response to the inaugural conference in 2000 and since that time NAACO has grown rapidly to include more than 300 institutions.

Melissa served as the NAACO Charter President and was the lead coordinator of the inaugural NAACO conference in 2000 as well as serving as the chair for the 2007 conference.

She has presented at past NAACO conferences, Academic Event Professionals Conference (AEP), and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Special Event conferences. She also chaired the February 2005 CASE Special Event conference in Toronto, Canada.  In November of 2011, Melissa participated as a Master in her field at the annual Meet the Masters event sponsored by the International Special Events Society (ISES) Greater Los Angeles Chapter.

Melissa has lead forums on a variety of graduation-related concerns including workshops on establishing mission statements for ceremonies, academic versus non-academic ceremonies, volunteer recruitment and retention, as well as how to establish and run graduation convocation events for colleges and special interest groups.

Melissa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Public Relations from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University and a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Northern Arizona University.