Melanie Schmit's entire working life has been about people in need, among which the biggest part has been in the field of homelessness. She studied social work, then completed a bachelor's degree  in health care management and a study around professional coaching and leadership. Currently she is focusing on education around public affairs. Melanie started out as a social worker in a homelessness service and after that was a manager for several years, mainly managing and implementing Housing First practices for adults as well as youth. Today, Melanie works for LIMOR on scaling up, further developing, and promoting Housing First in the Northern and Western part of The Netherlands. In that capacity she is also training groups on Housing First inside and outside the organisation. Furthermore Melanie is president of the national platform, Housing First Netherlands. She was a co-initiator and co-founder of this network organization that acts as a collective representative for Housing First practices in the Netherlands and Housing First in general.

Juha has been working for 10 years in the field of homelessness. He started as a frontline support worker in 2010 for the Finnish Youth housing association services (NALPA). NALPA offers housing first in scattered housing for young people experiencing homelessness. After 3,5 years Juha became the Service manager and his responsibility was to develop the services and manage the Housing First team. After 1,5 years of being the service manager Juha became the CEO of the whole company. Juha had the privilege of developing and growing the company to a widespread presence across Finland. Following NALPA, Juha started work at the Y-Foundation. He worked for a little over one year as a Coordinator for the  National Housing First Development Network. At the beginning of 2020, he became the Lead Coordinator of the same Network. As part of his role at the Network, Juha organises training courses at national level, and is working on developing the Housing First model together with dozens of NGO's and cities.