Keynote Speaker

Unloading Your Plate: Practicing Radical Care to Minimize Burnout

Academic advisors spend their days helping students navigate challenges, find direction, and imagine what is possible. That work can be deeply meaningful, and it can ask people to carry more than others see.

In this interactive keynote, Dr. Shekila Melchior invites advisors and student success professionals to pause and consider what is on their plates: visible responsibilities, invisible labor, and expectations that make it hard to set anything down. Drawing on a healing-centered, body-based approach, participants will explore how burnout shows up in their bodies and work, and what radical care can look like in practice. Through guided reflection, they will identify what they may need to release, renegotiate, share, or ask for support in carrying.

Together, we will consider how to stay rooted in community while creating more sustainable ways to care for students, one another, and ourselves.

Dr. Shekila Melchior is a scholar-activist-practitioner, licensed professional counselor, counselor educator, and nationally recognized speaker whose work bridges mental health, social justice, organizational well-being, and healing-centered leadership. She serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives, Partnerships, and Outreach in the Office for Access, Compliance, and Community at George Mason University, where she leads initiatives designed to strengthen institutional collaboration, community engagement, shared sense of belonging, and collective well-being.

Dr. Melchior brings more than a decade of experience supporting children, adolescents, adults, families, and helping professionals across clinical, educational, and community settings. Licensed in both Virginia and Tennessee, she has also delivered more than 100 presentations, trainings, and keynote addresses for universities, professional associations, behavioral health organizations, and community partners. Her areas of expertise include burnout and sustainable well-being, somatic and trauma-responsive practices, culturally responsive care, and healing-centered approaches to leadership and organizational culture.

Dr. Melchior is also the founder and owner of Mindful Legacy: a mental health practice providing culturally responsive counseling with a focus on non-western ways of healing in addition to leadership development, consultation, and holistic wellness experiences. She holds a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and a master’s degree in School Counseling.