Melissa Puente was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She illegally crossed the border to the land of opportunity in 1995 in the backseat of her mom's minivan. Melissa loves documentary and has worked in New York and Los Angeles as an editor and associate producer on a variety of music videos, documentaries and reality shows for MTV, VH-1, TLC, Discovery Channel, PBS, ABC and NBC. In 2000 she received a regional Emmy for her documentary 'Brides on the Homefront' and in 2006 she was awarded a National Daytime Emmy for Editing NBC's reality show 'Starting Over'.