Melissa Tait

Melissa Tait is an award-winning visual journalist for The Globe and Mail, based in Toronto. As photojournalist and video journalist she films, photographs, and animates visual stories across the organization.

Melissa joined The Globe in 2015 after her tenure as multimedia editor at the Winnipeg Free Press and reporter/photographer at the Waterloo Region Record. She holds a diploma in photojournalism from Loyalist College and a BA in International Development from the University of Guelph. She was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario.

She is a three-time National Newspaper Award winner, receiving the Sports Photo award in 2021 for capturing the Canadian women’s Olympic soccer gold-medal victory, and again in 2023 for a celebratory image from the Canadian Cheer National Championships. In 2019, she earned an NNA for her breaking news coverage with Renata D'Aliesio during the RCMP manhunt for murder suspects in northern Manitoba. Her work has been frequently nominated for other NNAs.

Melissa was twice named a finalist at the international Online Journalism Awards, run by the Online News Association. In 2023, she was nominated in the Large Newsroom Feature category for her story on Kamloops residential school survivor Norman Restasket and in 2021 for Digital Video Storytelling, Long Form with Timothy Moore for the Manhunt, Manitoba short documentary. She has also earned multiple honours from the Digital Publishing Awards and the National Pictures of the Year Awards by the News Photographers Association of Canada.

Besides gathering photos and video for work, Melissa enjoys gathering photos for friends and family (sometimes on film), drinking coffee, cooking new recipes, trying to keep house plants alive, and pretty much any sport.