With a career rooted in public health and community development, Melaku strives to create a future where the disadvantaged are not left behind. His journey is about fostering meaningful connections and creating opportunities for those often left behind to make informed decisions for positive change. Melaku strongly believes that a program can bring positive change if it only engages and embraces the people it is designed for right from the outset. Melaku aims to create community and stakeholder engagement strategies at each program management stage.

He is a certified healthcare quality improvement advisor and expert in public health program management, Melaku has helped government and international organizations in developing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating primary health care, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, maternal & child health, WASH and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) programs.

With an in-depth understanding of health management information systems (HMIS), Melaku currently serves as a government engagement lead and HMIS specialist for the BMGF-funded Data Use Partnership project aimed at prototyping strategies to improve data quality and use culture in Ethiopia’s Health Care System using human-centered design methods.

Before joining ThinkPlace, Melaku oversaw the Design of successful SBCC interventions and mainstreaming these interventions into existing government structures. Melaku also contributed to generating evidence from the field for the design and development of national NTD SBCC guidelines. Melaku also worked with various international NGOs such as Sightsavers, Save the Children, JSI, IntraHealth International etc., assuming senior positions and leading national projects funded by USAID, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Children Investment Fund, and many others