Melissa Navia is a Colombian-American actress who currently stars in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as Lt. Erica Ortegas, helmsman of the USS Enterprise. Born and raised in New York, she has played a myriad of singular characters on both the stage and screen, with TV credits including Common Charges, Bull, New Amsterdam, Billions, Dietland and Homeland.
In 2013, Melissa won the award for best actress at the Wild Rose Independent Film Festival for her role as Dawn in the sci-fi movie The Paragon Cortex. Melissa is also a writer and stand-up comedian. She plays the banjo and is trained in martial arts and sword fighting.
While Erica Ortegas is a new character to Star Trek, her surname pays homage to creator Gene Roddenberry’s original vision for the crew of the Enterprise. Navia is honored to originate a role that, much like Strange New Worlds itself, has been almost 60 years in the making. Ortegas embodies the ideals of Starfleet and the adventurous optimism at the heart of the franchise, with a future yet to be written and a universe still to explore.