Melissa Doman

Melissa Doman, MA, is an organizational psychologist, former clinical mental health therapist, and founder of The Workplace Mental Health Method™. She is the author of Yes, You Can Talk About Mental Health at Work (Here's Why and How to Do It Really Well) and Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health (Wiley, published February 2026).

Making the Case That Leadership Mental Health Can't Wait

Melissa's work rests on a hybrid background in both clinical and organizational psychology, which she uses to translate complex mental health concepts into simple, actionable skills for the workplace. Cornered Office argues that leadership mental health has effectively been "quietly erased" by centuries of expectation, biology, and sociology, conditioning leaders to hide emotional struggle rather than name it, and that the resulting silence costs organizations their best people through burnout and reactive decision-making. She offers a three-stage framework for leaders working through this: look back at the historical narratives shaping the expectation of self-sacrifice, name the present reality honestly, and choose differently going forward. She has worked with companies including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Progressive, Estée Lauder, Siemens, and the Orlando City Soccer Club, has spoken at SXSW, and has been named one of LinkedIn's Top Voices on Mental Health. More than 100,000 people have taken her LinkedIn Learning courses on talking about mental health at work.

Topics Melissa speaks on

• Why leadership mental health can't wait
• The real cost of the "corner office": what unaddressed leadership burnout costs organizations
• A three-stage framework for leaders: look back, name the present, choose differently
• How to talk about mental health at work constructively
• Duty of care for leaders, not just their teams

Sessions with Achieve

Melissa is a featured presenter on the Achieve webcast "Your Leaders Are Not Ok: Here's The Real Cost of the 'Corner' Office" (March 12, 2026), moderated by Zech Dahms, President of Achieve Engagement. The session drew directly on the arguments in Cornered Office, covering why leadership mental health has been historically dismissed and what organizations can do to build real duty of care for the people leading them.

Connect

• Melissa Doman on LinkedIn
• The Workplace Mental Health Method

Want more on what it actually takes to build a workplace where mental health, including a leader's own, gets talked about honestly? Learn more about the Achieve Leadership Network.