Following a brush with death in emergency heart surgery as well as a near-stroke from a frightening irregular heartbeat in the same year, Mellanie True Hills pledged to use her second chance to help others avoid the #1 and #3 killers, heart disease and stroke.

As an expert on women's health and the CEO of the American Foundation for Women's Health, she raises awareness of heart disease and stroke with her inspirational and motivational keynotes for American Heart Association Go Red for Women events, hospital women's health events, and corporate and association events. She creates real change, coaching individuals in creating healthy lifestyles and organizations in creating healthy, productive workplaces. Executives say, "Mellanie delivers real business results." Audiences say “She saved my life.”

After being cured of her life-threatening irregular heartbeat, atrial fibrillation, she launched www.StopAfib.org, a non-profit web site "for patients, by patients", which provides information and resources to those suffering with atrial fibrillation.

Always an agent of innovation, transformation and change, Mellanie previously led one of the first corporate web sites, JCPenney.com, and one of the first corporate intranets. She was a high tech executive at Dell, an executive strategist at Cisco, a world-renowned Internet strategy consultant, and spoke and consulted from Singapore to Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg to New Delhi .

Author of the award-winning A Woman's Guide to Saving Her Own Life: the HEART Program for Health and Longevity, and two best-sellers, Intranet Business Strategies (© John Wiley) and Intranet as Groupware (© John Wiley), she also appears in the highly-acclaimed Sixty Things to Do When You Turn Sixty  (©Sellers Publishing) alongside Garrison Keillor, Gloria Steinem, and Dr. Nicholas Perricone.

She has been featured by hundreds of media around the globe, including CNBC Asia, Reuters , Newsweek, Better Homes and Gardens, PBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Her story and the mission of the American Foundation for Women's Health were recently featured in Heart-Healthy Living magazine.

In addition to being a wife and mother, she is an active American Heart Association volunteer and has received their Outstanding Advocate Award for Texas . She has lobbied in Washington , DC and Austin , served on numerous committees and as a member of the Board of Directors for Williamson County , and appeared in media throughout the country raising awareness of heart disease and stroke.

She was recently named a finalist for the 2007 Blazing Star Award by the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Texas and the Texas Governor's Commission for Women.

She also serves on the Finance Committee of the Foundation for Women's Resources and Leadership Texas, and is a member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), the International Federation for Professional Speakers (IFFPS), and Mended Hearts.

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