Melissa Nieves 

Melissa Nieves is the Director of the Adult Education Program at Union Settlement Association and has 17 years experience in Adult Education as a teacher and counselor for English as a Second Language, Basic Education, GED and College Preparation. She also lived and worked abroad for three years in France, where she was a Professor of International Business Communication at the Grand Ecole Edhec. She is fluent in Spanish, French and Italian

Melissa has been student of Zen Meditation for three years at the Uptown Meditation Center. In the first year, she collaborated on a project with Stan adapting meditation practice to assist Pre-GED and GED students achieve their educational goals. Since that time she has been instrumental in acquiring funding and organizing mediation/focusing classes as part of the regular GED curriculum. During Fall 2008 the first integrated GED/Meditation (Tset Program) classes were instituted at Union Settlement. Stan and Jonathan were contracted by Union Settlement to teach the 30 hour module. In addition Mellissa completed the ten day intensive training in the application of the Zen protocols in the spring of 2008 under the direction of Zen Master Jun Po Dennis Kelly.  

Melissa has been studying martial arts for about 18 months with Richard at Ultimate Karate. She also regularly attends Daniel Marks 52 Blocks style boxing classes on Sundays. Melissa speaks three languages, English, Spanish and French. Looking to expand to a non European language, during her spare time she has just enrolled in a Japanese language course.