Melissa Hunter Gurney is a writer, educator, curator and environmental steward.

She is Founder of The Omni Institute — a progressive educational platform that encourages exploration of the wilds, Co-founder of the Lo—TEK Curriculum as well as GAMBA Forest, a community art space and one-room schoolhouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Black Land Ownership, a grassroots organization put in place to combat systemic oppression around property ownership in the Americas. She believes that being an artist is like being a confluence of rivers—there is one body and through that body an abundance of pathways are born. Each new lineage connected at the core. This is why she writes, paints, teaches, curates, designs, advocates and builds with nature—each project birthed by and connected to the other. Each path harnessing wilderness with the growth of its kin. She says it is, and always will be, the way of The Women. Not surprisingly, her written work tends to explore the multi-faceted experiences of Pan-American women and artists and can be found in various publications both nationally and internationally.