Melody Yun Ya Ma 馬勻雅
Screen Break Fellow
Melody Yun Ya Ma 馬勻雅 (she/her) is a Hakka 客家 Toisan 台山 Chinese second-generation settler living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, known colonially as Vancouver, Canada. She is a multidisciplinary entrepreneur and cultural innovator working at the intersection of technology, culture, and social change.
Melody is the Founder of FormPay, the simplest e-commerce solution serving micro-merchants globally, and the Ecosystem and Strategic Engagement Lead at DemocracyXChange, Canada’s leading democracy summit. She was also the Co-founder of Podyssey Podcasts (exited), which reached 1.5 million users annually.
At Moneris Solutions, the largest payment processor in Canada, Melody led product development and marketing for national gift, loyalty, and Air Miles programs supporting both large enterprises and small businesses. After attending a coding bootcamp, she became a software developer on MEC’s e-commerce team. Her journey into coding inspired her to lead a province-wide initiative in British Columbia to integrate coding into schools in partnership with the BC Ministry of Education, the BC Teachers’ Federation, industry, and community organizations. She led the Hour of Code BC and CodeCreate campaigns, hosting large-scale student coding events and activating more than 700 additional classroom and community activities across the province, helping secure $6 million in provincial funding and teacher training for coding education.
Melody has served as an invited expert to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on web accessibility and was a member of the Technology Labour Market Partnership & Workforce Development Committee for the Government of British Columbia. She co-founded Code for Canada’s Vancouver Brigade, connecting government, technologists, and communities to advance civic technology.
A Fellow of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the EU’s Global Cultural Relations Platform, Melody is also a founding Board Member of The Tyee, Founding Director of Critical Alternatives, Founding Director of the Foundation for Chinese Dignity 華人尊嚴會, the Campaign Lead for SaveChinatownYVR, as well as a former Trustee of the Vancouver Public Library Board. Her writing and advocacy have appeared in The Economist, CBC, Maclean’s, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, and South China Morning Post.