Womxn’s History Month Series: Melanie Cordova on Her Path to Publishing Career

With March being Womxn’s History Month, Emerson’s Career Development Center is presenting its third annual Womxn of Emerson Series. The series highlights Emerson womxn in the arts and communication and the many ways we define success.

Melanie Cordova ’10 is the first featured alum. Cordova has steadily built her career as an editor and works at Candlewick Press where she started in sales and is currently an associate editor. With a little bit of history involving children’s books, her career path took some interesting turns thanks to some great opportunities within the Emerson community.

Cordova was asked what does representation for womxn mean to her in the field of publishing:

People who work in publishing, especially in children’s publishing, are mostly womxn. However, womxn of color are still few and far between. Throughout my career, I’ve gotten used to being the only Latinx person in the room and, sometimes, the only person of color in the room. It shouldn’t be that way. Publishing needs to be more of a true representation of how the world really looks because when there’s more diversity in publishing, the books that we create become far more diverse as well.”