Melissa Sanasie is a Toronto based marketing leader who specializes in digital strategy, content, and performance marketing. She works at Shopify and has more than twelve years of experience helping major Canadian brands grow.
A Morning That Explains the Work
The sun comes up slowly over Leslieville. Cafes open their doors. Cyclists roll down Queen Street. Inside a small corner workspace, Melissa Sanasie flips through her notebook while her dog Luna curls up at her feet. She is checking numbers from the latest campaign, but she is also sketching ideas. This mix of data and creativity is how she starts most days. It is the balance that has shaped her entire career.
The theme that runs through Melissa’s story is curiosity. Not the casual kind. The steady kind that pushes a person to learn tools, test ideas, and look closer at how people behave online. Curiosity is what helped her grow from a Scarborough kid volunteering at the local library into one of the most trusted digital marketers in Toronto.
Where Curiosity Began
Melissa did not grow up surrounded by tech or marketing. Her mother ran a home daycare. Her father worked as a systems technician. What she did have was a home filled with stories. Caribbean and South Asian traditions mixed with Toronto culture. She learned to listen. She learned to read people. She learned how messaging changes depending on who is on the other side.
At Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts, she specialized in media. She spent hours learning how design, color, and storytelling shape attention. It set things in motion. When she entered Toronto Metropolitan University, she already knew she wanted to build things that people cared about.
A Career Built on Learning
Melissa’s path through Hudson’s Bay Company, RBC, and Shopify is not a straight climb. It is a map of lessons.
At HBC, she learned how retail lives and dies by timing. Seasonal campaigns. Influencer pushes. The right message at the right moment. She helped launch the company’s early influencer collaborations and supported major holiday rollouts. It taught her how audiences shift and how brands need to adapt fast.
At RBC, she learned precision. She managed large paid media budgets, ran A/B tests across major landing pages, and worked with analytics systems that tracked behavior down to the smallest action. She partnered with RBC Ventures and helped build a financial wellness hub. She also built automation workflows that shaped how millions of customers interacted with the brand. It was here that data stopped being a tool and became part of her mindset.
At Shopify, she learned scale. She works across markets in Canada, the UK, and Australia. She leads SEO efforts for the Shopify blog. She manages influencer campaigns and performance marketing programs. She helped design retention workflows that boosted email engagement. Her #ShopLocalShopify holiday campaign drove a major spike in organic traffic. It showed her how growth looks when a global company trusts a team to test bold ideas.
The Heart of Her Approach
Every step of Melissa’s career comes back to one idea. Curiosity leads to clarity. She asks simple questions that open complex doors.
- What are people trying to do here.
- Why did this message work yesterday but not today.
- What changes if we shift the content or the spend.
She enjoys the puzzle. Not the trophy. This is why she has become a speaker at major marketing events and a mentor for young women in tech. She wants people to understand that skill comes from showing up again and again, looking closer, asking the next question.
A Life Outside the Screen
Melissa’s work life is digital, but her inspiration comes from real places. She hikes in High Park and Rouge Park on weekends. She takes her sketchbook when she travels. Her food blog, @BitesByMelissa, grew from a personal hobby into a small corner of Toronto’s food community. These parts of her life feed her creative side and keep her grounded in the city that shaped her.
Why Curiosity Matters Now
Marketing changes fast. Algorithms shift. Platforms rise and fall. People move in new patterns. Melissa’s story shows that curiosity is not optional. It is the anchor that keeps a marketer steady when the industry changes around them.
Her work at Shopify and across her earlier roles proves that the people who ask the most questions often build the strongest results. Curiosity helps teams understand audiences, build better content, and create campaigns that are worth remembering.
Interview with Melissa Sanasie
How did growing up in Scarborough shape the way you work today
Growing up in a tight community taught me how to read people. You learn to pay attention, listen closely, and understand what matters to different groups. Those things guide every project I work on.
What role has curiosity played in your career
Curiosity is why I test everything. It is why I took on work in retail, banking, and tech. Each field taught me how people behave in different environments. I like figuring out why things work and why they stop working.
What is one lesson from your time at RBC that still helps you now
Precision. At RBC I worked with teams that pushed hard to understand the meaning behind every number. It taught me to look at data as a story, not just a metric.
How do you stay ahead in a field that changes this fast
I study the patterns. I track small shifts. I test new tools early. And I surround myself with other marketers who care about the craft. You can’t stay still in this field.
What advice do you give young marketers you mentor
Do not chase every trend. Learn why people behave the way they do. Learn how to test ideas. Learn how to measure what matters. Those things last.
What keeps you inspired outside of work
Travel and food. I get ideas from colors, sounds, and places. Toronto has so many stories in its neighborhoods. Those experiences help me think in new ways.
