Melissa comes with almost 30 years of experience in the criminal justice field, either working, researching, developing, or delivering education and training. Her employment history includes a paralegal in criminal law, a booking, and intake officer cross-trained in forensic crime scene investigation, and a former criminal justice and criminology professor for almost 15 years. In 2000, Melissa assisted in training and educating the FBI's Evidence Response Team in crime scene collection of human remains and time since death at the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropological Research Facility, the Body Farm. Her experience also includes developing and delivering mass fatalities and counter-terrorism education content at the Department of Homeland Security training division and the College of Forensic Psychology on expert witness courtroom testimony regarding Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

In continuing her work, she DeVille and Associates, a forensic consulting and interagency training firm. She has been consulting and training focusing on illicit topics such as cryptocurrency and dark web, cyber forensic psychology, cognitive and dark psychology, cybersex predators, sexual deviance, and human trafficking. She has also been developing content and training online social media moderators on combating violence and predator behavior on social media and gaming platforms, as well as gathering cyber data on sex trafficking cases.