Melissa Prowse

Melissa Prowse is the Director of Parks and Recreation for the city of Huntington Woods (October 2025).  Prior to this role, she was the Manager of Planning and Development for Oakland County Parks and was with OC Parks for nearly 20 years.  Over the course of her career she has facilitated many land acquisitions for parks and nature reserves, as well as overseeing the natural resource management of the county parks.  Melissa has been a grant-writer and planner for nearly 20 years and enjoys the process of rallying a passionate team around a project, finding the funding, and seeing it come to fruition.

Melissa started her career as a Program Associate for the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s GreenWays Initiative program.  This experience fostered many incredible relationships throughout the southeast Michigan conservation and recreation community that have guided and supported her throughout her career both professionally and personally. While she’s been a friend of Six Rivers for many years, Melissa has really grown to know and love SLRC over the past 5 years after partnering on the acquisition of the Turtle Woods nature preserve in Troy – a project that highlights the power of organizations working together to conserve and preserve “Nature Near You!” 

A lifelong Michigander, Melissa has a deep love of the outdoors and enjoys camping, hiking and working in her native gardens. In addition to her full-time job, Melissa and her husband co-own the Great Lakes Relay, a 3-day, 300-mile relay race through northern Michigan’s most beautiful forests and shorelines that takes place every July. Melissa is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BS Environmental Policy) and Wayne State University (Master of Urban Planning).