By Helen Harlan

Melissa Muganzo says she never gets stage fright. 

“I’m ready to go,” Muganzo declares, point blank, as she sits on the edge of the Shasta Hall stage at Sacramento State on a rainy mid-February Thursday before her Theatre 1 students arrive. “I’m a dancer.”

However, the theater and dance professor, who earned her master’s degree in higher education leadership at Sacramento State, is more than just that. 

“I am an entertainer, I’m a humanitarian and I’m also an entrepreneur. In those three titles, I do a host of things,” she says. “I’m an actor, I’m a professor, I’m a food business owner and I’m also a trained dancer.”

Muganzo was born in Florida — raised in Rialto in San Bernardino County — before moving to Northern California for college. Many of Muganzo’s talents fall under the banner of her brand Muganzo Entertainment. Her motto is “Do it afraid first, and then with confidence,” which she has embodied since childhood. 

“My first paid gig was when I was 15, and I choreographed for my friend’s quinceañera. It was everything,” she says. “I got paid $400 in the [form] of a dress for my sister, who was a dancer.”

Muganzo also did hair as a teenager: single braids; weaves; wigs; crochets; and perms that sold for $50 to $75. She kept practicing this side hustle as an undergrad at UC Davis where she earned a bachelor’s degree in community and regional development. 

“I continued to do hair in the residence halls at Davis. I was even doing the administration’s hair,” she says. “They would come to my dorm, and I would do their hair.”

During a production of “The Vagina Monologues” as an Aggie, Muganzo got bit by the acting bug. She went on to study acting locally at Studio24 in Folsom and was last seen on stage at the Sofia in Mosaic School for the Performing/Integrated Arts’s production of “Dear Grandmother.”

From 2023-24, Muganzo was an Artist in Residence for the City of Sacramento, where she worked with the Department of Transportation to help curate scripts, voiceovers and marketing concepts.

“My artist in residency with the City of Sacramento was actually something really, really special,” she says. “I never saw myself as an artist working for any type of government entity, because I always felt that government was very restricting and red tape filled.”

Pride is a big theme in Muganzo’s brand and person. She identifies as a “proud queer Black woman with Indigenous immigrant roots in East Africa and the [Virgin] Islands.” When individuals are threatened by her activism, the former Sac State Pride Center coordinator is ready to push back. 

“I’m ready to have those conversations, to talk about the deep-rooted programming that is really harmful and how it’s really important to support your student,” she says.

So what about breaks? Muganzo says she doesn’t need them and is just fine with that. “The cool thing about what I get to do is that I get paid to be myself. For a lot of people, they don’t get to do that. Their artistry is like an outside gig, but they have to go back to this other life,” she says. “This is my real life every day, all day, and I’m obsessed with it.”

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.