Mellissa Tong

Chief StorySeller at DuckPunk Productions, Inc.

Mellissa is a former TV Newscaster, Hollywood Movie Producer, TV commercials Director/Producer, and Chief StorySeller at DuckPunk Productions, Inc., an award-winning StorySelling agency and content production company. Mellissa believes in facts tell, stories sell. “When you’re able to pull the heartstrings, you can transform, impact, and influence behaviors and change lives,” she says.

Growing up, Mellissa always felt awkward and didn’t know how to connect with people. She was a music composition major and an English literature minor. After graduate school, instead of working as a composer, she got hired as a TV Newscaster and was put in charge of a daily 5-minute human interest segment for a satellite TV station. She was not only forced to connect with people but also had to learn how to pull information out of them to craft a story every single day. During those four years, she interviewed thousands and crafted over 1,200 on-air stories.

Later, she was able to parlay her non-fiction storytelling skills into the fiction side and worked at one of CBS’s primetime scripted shows called Martial Law, starring Arsenio Hall. She founded DuckPunk in 2000 to embark fully on her Hollywood movie-producing career. She made 3 short films and 3 feature films, won many awards at national film festivals, and worked with major celebrities such as Bryan Cranston, Keke Palmer, and Shaquille O’Neal, to name a few. Her last film, Touch, opened at AMC Theaters and was streaming on Hulu and iTunes before becoming available on Amazon Prime.

While Mellissa was busy with her filmmaking career, she was presented with an opportunity in 2003 to work on TV commercials. Since then, DuckPunk has been fortunate to have worked with major brands such as CVS, Nissan, Verizon, Wells Fargo, Old Navy, and McDonald’s, to name a few.

Mellissa is very passionate about women and social justice issues. In her leisure time, she sits on various non-profit boards, including the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce and CalArts alumni board. Previously, she sat on the board for Vision of Health and NAWBO LA.

An MFA graduate from the California Institute of the Arts, she firmly believes in this quote by Pablo Picasso: “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”