Analorena Melendez

April – May 2024 Cover Woman 

As I look at her helping that brilliant son of hers, it’s hard to imagine how much different things could have been. Had that day nine years ago turned out differently.

After a difficult time getting pregnant, the day had come for Ana and her husband Michael to meet the son she dreamed of most of her life. A life that seemed like it was going to be taken far too soon.

Ana experienced complications from her pregnancy due to placenta accreta. During delivery she lost half of her blood volume and needed three emergency transfusions – that presented its own set of challenges. The hospital she was in did not have her blood type. That led to a frantic search at other hospitals to get it quickly enough. Further delaying the surgery needed to save her life. But just like she’s always fought for what she wants, that day she fought to stay alive.

That was 2015, here we are on this Tuesday night inside her Northeast Tallahassee home sitting around the kitchen table watching her now 8-year-old play. Ana is living what some might call her best life. She’s a businesswoman, community servant, loving daughter, wife and most importantly a mother. If you spend any time with her, you know just how much she loves that title. If you spend as much time with her as I do, you feel the love she has for her sweet Addison and her husband Michael. A love that extends far beyond the Melendez-Anders family and deep into Tallahassee.

Ana’s ability to connect with nearly anyone is impressive. Her husband Michael has many stories about relationships she’s made as they’ve lived all over the world.

“Ana is extremely gregarious and has never met a stranger in her life.  While living in San Francisco, I would travel to Portland each week for work and stayed in the same hotel 3-4 nights a week.  Ana, several months pregnant, visited for one week and by the end of her trip knew everyone from the parking attendant to a friendly local billionaire.”

To appreciate Ana’s desire to make everyone feel seen and loved, we must look back at how she got here.

Back to the beginning

Picture it, the year is 1985 and a six-year-old arrives in the United States for the first time. If you’re a Golden Girls fan like Ana this is not the start of a Sophia Petrillo story – it’s so much better. When the plane touched down in Columbus, Ohio it was unlike anything Ana had ever seen. The ground was covered with snow, that was a first.  Her father’s job with an engineering company brought the family to the United States. What was supposed to be a short stay turned into home for the Melendez family.

As with all new beginnings the move to the U.S. even at six, was not without its challenges. There was the language barrier that forced Ana to repeat kindergarten. Never being one to be defeated, Ana spent those early days watching television and studying daily in her English- Spanish dictionary. It quickly paid off – within three months she had mastered the English language. At least as well as anyone could have at that age. Despite overcoming that barrier, she faced other challenges.  “Kids were pretty mean to me; they wouldn’t play with me because I was from another country. I remember one girl with red hair, Shannon.  She was always nice to me.” Ana tells that part of the story with a smile – one that takes you away from that childhood sadness and warms your heart to know that she wasn’t alone.

Finding her way

While we know Ana as the businesswoman, owner of A&E wholesale, her passion for music almost took her down a different path. She played saxophone in high school so when it was time to decide about life afterwards. “I told my dad I wanted to be a saxophonist and he said you are like me; you should do business.” After-all she was the only middle schooler in 1993 with a laptop at the science fair. The project, how does AI help human efficiency. While Ana spent a lot of time with her mom and younger siblings while dad worked, she would at times find herself on the job with him at his software company.  Those lessons of how to treat people and run a business are ones that she’s held onto since she was 15.

Family Business

Fresh out of Ohio State Ana made the move back to Mexico City. She moved there to open an office for her father’s company. With the biggest smile, she tells me about living in her mother’s childhood home with her grandparents during that time. That smile soon fades and her voice changes as she tells me about being robbed at gunpoint. She also talks about the things she missed during that time. Things that we take for granted like a walk or run before the sun comes up or goes down because it just was not safe. After a year there, Ana felt that she’d learned all she could and was ready to return to the place she called home most of her life. “When I arrived back in the U.S. and the customs officer said welcome home I just started crying. I was so happy to be back.”

Chasing her dreams

Back home Ana started her MBA at Ohio State, of course. Landing an internship that would later have her move to Chicago. A job that would tap into her passion for travel taking her places like Hong Kong making business deals for her company as a brand strategist. “The day I got my first check from a Fortune 500 company I was sitting in my office cubicle, and I started crying.

To learn more about the Cover Woman and her inspiring journey, you can access the full article by clicking on the magazine above.

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