Melissa Paulsen

Entrepreneurship and Education Program Director; Integration Lab Administrative Director; and Professor of the Practice

Melissa Paulsen

3150C Jenkins Nanovic Halls
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556

(574) 631-7568
mpaulse1@nd.edu

Melissa Paulsen

Entrepreneurship and Education Program Director; Integration Lab Administrative Director; and Professor of the Practice

Expertise

Business and development; social entrepreneurship

At the Keough School

Melissa Paulsen leads the Entrepreneurship and Education Division at the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development, working with faculty to develop interdisciplinary approaches to development programs. In addition she serves as administrative director and faculty advisor for the Master of Global Affairs program’s Integration Lab (i-Lab) and as co-director of the Keough School’s social entrepreneurship and innovation minor. 

Courses

Biography

A teacher, researcher, and entrepreneur, Paulsen embodies the multifaceted approach necessary to devise and implement solutions for the world’s most complex challenges. She has managed experiential and service-learning programs for undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals around the world.

Paulsen has played an instrumental role in Notre Dame’s partnership with the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, the flagship program of the US Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). The Pulte Institute has been a YALI partner since 2013, welcoming 25 of Africa’s brightest emerging leaders to campus each summer for a six-week leadership institute sponsored by the US Department of State.

Paulsen’s human-centered approach puts the people most affected by the issues her work addresses at the core of the planning and implementation process. In 2023, she was honored with a University of Notre Dame Presidential Achievement Award for being “a role model who embodies all of the University’s core values.”

Before joining the Pulte Institute, Paulsen served as an assistant director at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, where she helped launch a Microventuring Certificate Program for undergraduate business and nonbusiness to provide technical and other consulting services to low-income entrepreneurs.

Paulsen holds a master’s degree in nonprofit administration from Notre Dame and a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from Assumption College.