Mother Melissa Skelton was born in Columbus, Georgia, at Fort Benning, one of four children in an a military family. As military families do, they moved frequently, living mostly within the Southeastern United States and overseas in Germany.

Melissa was baptized in the Presbyterian Church at the age of twelve, but only stayed in that communion for a year. She was confirmed in the Episcopal Church as an adult in 1978.

Melissa graduated from the University of Georgia with Honors, earning a degree in Renaissance Studies with an emphasis on English Renaissance Literature. She went on to get three Master’s degrees: a Master of Arts in English, (with a thesis on Milton’s theological treatise, De Doctrina Christiana), a Master of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago.

She was ordained to the priesthood in 1993 while working as a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble, and continued to work at P&G while serving in a local parish in Cincinnati.

She soon moved to New York City to serve as the Vice President of Administration at the General Theological Seminary. While there, in addition to her role of overseeing the seminary’s operations, she taught seminary courses in Christian Education, served on the staff of the Church Development Institute and oversaw the College for New Bishops.

While in New York, Melissa also served as Priest Associate at Trinity Wall Street, and then as Associate at St. Andrew’s in Trenton, New Jersey.

In 1997, Melissa left her position at General and went to work for Tom’s of Maine as “Vice President of everything.” There she oversaw consumer and brand development, communications and advertising, the development of a number of new products and the company’s organization development efforts. This allowed her to work on developing processes and interventions that strengthened the way the company operated according to its values (respecting nature and people).

Melissa left Tom’s and became Rector of Trinity Church, Castine, Maine, moving to a turn of the century farmhouse on Deer Isle, Maine, in the process. There she also started a consulting business with two emphases: in-depth consumer work (what some call “consumer ethnography”) and organization and congregational development.

Melissa has an adult son who lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

Mother Skelton accepted the call to become Rector of St. Paul’s in 2005.