Most recently Gilbert was a producer/story consultant for Love Them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary (2019, KARE11-TV, national broadcast in October 2019).
Prior to making documentaries, Melody was an award-winning broadcast journalist for 15 years at TV stations around the country.
She started her career as the audience coordinator at the original Charlie Rose Show with a live audience at noon on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. She moved on to TV stations WPIX and WOR in New York, where she worked as a production assistant and news writer and then to various stations as a reporter, producer and anchor for WAOW in Wausau, WI, WJXT in Jacksonville, FL and eventually landing in Minnesota for twenty years where she worked at TV stations including KSTP, WCCO, and Twin Cities Public Television.
In Fall 2019, she joined the faculty at Northwestern State University in the department of New Media, Journalism, and Communication Arts where she will be teaching the next generation of visual storytellers.
She received the American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) national award for best series for Defying Tradition: Hmong Teen Brides.
Her short documentary Jamie Butcher Dies at Home was shown on ABC's Prime Time Live.
[8] Melody is also the executive producer of American Heart (2013), the co-director of Steps in the Fire (2014), the first 3D documentary in Bulgaria, and the producer/writer of Women Outward Bound (2016).