A COMMUNITY LEADER
Melody Joy Hart, CPA, CTP, FPAC, is a finance professional with over 30 years of experience in financial risk and compliance, debt issuance, budget management, forecasting, and cash management. She is a certified in Financial Planning and Analysis, is a Certified Public Accountant, and a Certified Treasury Professional. In her role as a Senior Consultant with Atlanta-based Strategic Treasurer corporate treasury consultants, she worked with Fortune 500 companies advising them about financing, analysis, systems, banking, investments, controls and best practices.
Melody and her husband Gary Benjamin are well-known in Greater Cleveland and beyond for their activism on behalf of Ansly Damus, a Haitian asylum seeker who they sponsored for over a year following his two-year legal battle during which they provided him support, friendship, and housing. Damus now lives independently in Cleveland, works at Federal Metals and is a Tri-C student.
Melody and her husband Gary celebrate with Haitian asylum seeker Ansly Damus after a judge approved his sponsorship to stay in the U.S.
The couple have applied to sponsor Damus’ family to come to the U.S. to join him.
Melody Joy Hart and Gary Benjamin continue to advocate for Haitian immigrant Damus; they’ve applied to sponsor his family in the U.S.
MORE ABOUT MELODY
Raised in a suburb of Chicago, Melody has been a resident of Cleveland Heights, Ohio since 2005 where she lives with her husband.
After attending Cleveland Heights City council meetings for several years, Melody had watched the budgeting process and recognized that her background would be valuable to the city. During the November 2019 election, she was the highest vote-getter of all candidates.
In 2022, she was recognized for her history of service and leadership when her fellow council members held a 6-0 vote electing her as Council President.
Always an active participant in the political process, Melody is a member of Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC) and the GCC Cleveland Heights housing committee. In that capacity, she has worked with the GCC team to walk the Noble neighborhood to identify unmaintained investor owned or bank owned properties, researching and providing the data to city inspectors. GCC has successfully pushed to get a foreclosure bond passed, to add a forensic inspector to deal with the worst properties, and to support a Community Development Corporation. During these efforts, she decided it was time to serve on the council and make change from the inside, working for progress in the city she loves for its “diversity, walkable streets and friendly neighbors.”
We are all neighbors. We should be able to work together to find common ground to benefit our wonderful city and all its residents.”
An enthusiastic grandmother, cyclist and gardener, Melody is also an active member of Greater Cleveland Congregations, serves on the Investment, Audit and Finance committees at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, and she is the Board Finance Chair for Mercado Global.