As senior manager of health and welfare benefits at BMO, Melissa Dal Veccio acts as a strategic connector across the organization, partners and employees to ensure the programs align with enterprise goals while remaining accessible — a job she takes very seriously.
"I combine deep empathy for the employee experience with the ability to translate benefits strategies into solutions that drive both business outcomes and employee well-being," Dal Veccio said. "I'm known for leading with both heart and data, transforming complexity into clarity, building scalable solutions, and communicating with purpose."
In 2025, Dal Veccio led a communication and education strategy that transformed benefits from static information into practical decision support for employees. By positioning BMO's benefits website as the central hub for U.S. benefits information and reinforcing it through email campaigns and on-demand resources, she reduced confusion and made benefits easier to understand and use.
As a part of those efforts, Dal Veccio and her team also launched the Be Ready Learning Series, a live education program that helped employees make informed decisions and prepare confidently for Annual Enrollment. Those sessions earned average ratings above 4.5 out of 5, with 75% of participants reporting more informed benefits decisions. Ninety-three percent of employees rated the experience positively and 95% even asked for the series to continue.
"This effort went beyond operational improvement; it represented a meaningful culture shift," Dal Vecchio said. "Benefits became more visible, more trusted, and more integrated into the overall employee experience."
As a result, engagement remained strong despite the introduction of passive enrollment. In fact, 76% of employees actively engaged during annual enrollment, and 86% of HSA-eligible employees contributed to an HSA, reflecting effective education around both health and financial benefits.
"My approach is grounded in collaboration, continuous improvement and a strong commitment to both people and performance," Dal Veccio said. "I am proud of my role in driving BMO's progress and I will be focused on scaling these efforts to drive even greater impact moving forward."
Melissa will be honored at EBN's Benefits at Work conference in September, which you can
