About Melissa

Home has always meant something specific to me — and it took most of my life to understand why.

My family came to the Bay Area from the Philippines in the mid-80s, part of a generation of Filipino immigrants who built their lives here with intention and grit. I was born in Southern California, and by the time I was five, we'd moved again — this time to a suburb outside of Vancouver, BC. I grew up Canadian, went to high school in Oregon, and then headed back to Canada for university, where I met the man who would become my husband and partner in everything.

Home, for me, was never one fixed place. It was wherever my people were.

In 2012, my husband and I moved to the Bay Area together — and something clicked. San Francisco first, then Oakland a few years later, where we started our family and truly put down roots. Coming back to the Bay felt like a full-circle moment I hadn't been looking for but somehow needed. This is where my parents built their American dream. This is where I'm building mine.

I'm deeply rooted in the East Bay, and I mean that in every sense. I live in Oakland with my husband and our two boys, and this city has given our family exactly what I always hoped a home could — community, character, and a place to belong.

Outside of real estate, I serve on the Board of the City Surf Project, advise entrepreneurs through the ICA Fund and Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, and foster dogs through Copper's Dream Animal Rescue. When I'm not doing any of that, you'll find me at hula class, on the golf course or tennis court, or around a table with good food and good people.

I became a Realtor because I know what it means to search for home — across cities, across countries, across chapters of life. That search is personal. And I take it seriously.

Let's find yours.