WEA24019 Woman Leadership of the Year Business 5 - 10 Years

Melissa Buch is the founder and CEO of Brandbuch. As a child of many cultures, with multilingual and multi-talented children of her own, she understands how to transform diverse backgrounds into a positive future. Melissa has worked as a brand strategist and consultant for the world’s biggest multinationals. However, after ten years, she realized that traditional branding methods and models were no longer helping clients grow. Shortly after moving to Zurich, she developed the In&Out™ methodology, identifying purpose as the only engine for sustainable growth. By pioneering purpose-driven growth, she has helped over a hundred companies make meaningful impacts. These accomplishments range from launching PepsiCo’s first global corporate volunteering program (One Smile at A time), which impacted 300,000 employees and increased volunteering by 120%, to guiding a leading industrial group's purposeful transformation, which advanced their sustainable journey and accelerated profit growth by more than 30%. While many leaders talk about purpose, few actually embody it. Melissa does. She and her team work with clients, both large and small, to navigate the world of purposeful and authentic communications. Using their unique 'Storyproofing™' concept, they help clients build stories around evidence of their achievements, showcasing the journey from Storytelling to Storydoing and Storyproofing™. Internally, Melissa and her team embody the principles they advocate, operating as a passionate and dedicated team working remotely across six countries in a free and self-managed entity. It's an organization without rigid structures, where people lead by influence rather than title. Melissa has worked hard to create a company culture founded on freedom, respect, and balance.