She joined the Newhouse School faculty in 2016 from the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech, where she was the recipient of the Billy I. Ross Faculty Achievement Award and the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Virginia Commonwealth University, a master’s in media studies from the Newhouse School and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mel White is an expert in creative visual advertising and gender diversity in advertising agency creative departments – for the former, White has most recently investigated in a paper and conference presentation titled “Tracing the Emergence and Dominance of Visual Solution Advertising: A Preliminary Study”. For the latter, White has partnered with fellow Newhouse Assistant Professor, Rebecca Ortiz, for a mixed-methods study that will entail the compiling and analysis of personnel data from dozens of NYC advertising agencies and performing semi-structured interviews with a cross-section of creative department staff at a few NYC agencies. The study seeks to investigate a commonly quoted statistic that the creative leadership at ad agencies is, on average, 11% women and 89% men, while also exploring the factors and obstacles that women creatives report that make it difficult or nearly impossible for them to obtain creative leadership positions at advertising agencies.

Before being recruited to teach Creative Advertising at Newhouse, White spent more than 25 years in advertising – 17 of these years as a veteran of the New York City advertising scene where she worked as a creative director/art director at top agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy, Grey, Publicis and D’Arcy.

She has worked on a range of accounts from packaged goods to technology on many high-profile brands such as Microsoft, Land Rover, MINI Cooper, Crest, Dannon, American Express, Lea & Perrins, Miller, Xerox, Dell, Sony, Bounty, Green Mountain Coffee, Hillshire Farm, Old El Paso, Cellular South, Sleep Number, Fisher-Price, Capitol One, Always, Pillsbury, Swiffer, UNCF and Search Dog Foundation. She has big pitch experience for national brands such as Famous Footwear, Sleep Number, Ameriprise Financial, Transitions Lenses and Earthlink and has been instrumental in winning pitches for new accounts—most notably at Young & Rubicam and Ogilvy.

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Prior to his switch to academia in 2008, Sheehan spent 25 years with Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising. After five years in S&S’s New York headquarters, he spent the next 11 years overseas, working in S&S Hong Kong, and as CEO of S&S Japan and S&S Australia. He then spent nine years as chairman and CEO of Team One Advertising in Los Angeles (a division of Saatchi & Saatchi).

In his career, Sheehan has worked with many top national and international brands, including Toyota, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Hilton, British Airways, IKEA, TIME, News Corporation, Bayer, DuPont, Sara Lee, Kodak, Ritz-Carlton, Castrol and Hewlett-Packard.

Sheehan has consulted for a number of national and international companies, including Petrobras, Brazil’s national energy company and Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank. He has also been an advisory board member of a number of digital companies.

In 2010, Sheehan published his first book, “.” In 2011, he published his second book, “.” In June 2013, he published his third book, “.” In 2020, he published “,” an advertising textbook he co-authored with fellow Newhouse advertising professor Ed Russell.  The book is being used in over 30 universities.

Sheehan publishes regularly in Advertising Age and Adweek, and has published articles in peer-reviewed advertising journals, including the Journal of Advertising Research.