Melissa Navia stars in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as Lt. Erica Ortegas, helmsman of the
USS Enterprise. Born and raised in NY, she is a Colombian-American actor and writer who has
portrayed a myriad of singular characters on both the stage and screen, including roles on
Billions (Showtime), where she played an astronaut bound for a life on Mars, and Dietland
(AMC), where she played a vigilante on a mission of retribution for crimes against women.
Other TV credits include Bull (CBS), New Amsterdam (NBC), and Homeland (Showtime).
Navia made her Off-Broadway debut at INTAR, a theatre company known for its history of
championing new works by Latin playwrights, with a critically acclaimed performance in the
world premiere of C. Julian Jiménez’s Bundle of Sticks. Her filmography includes over a dozen
indie films, including Bel Canto with Julianne Moore, Sleeping with the Fishes with Gina
Rodriguez, and Amira & Sam with her Strange New Worlds co-star Paul Wesley.
While Erica Ortegas is new to the world of 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. Navia’s own STEM outreach and space advocacy work is an extension of her onscreen work. She harnesses the power of storytelling and interdisciplinary collaborations to
engage, educate, and inspire audiences. Recent events of note include partnering with NASA
to interview astronaut Michael López-Alegría aboard the International Space Station and
hosting the National Space Society’s 2024 International Space Development Conference.
Navia is also a stand-up comedian who plays the banjo and is trained in martial arts and sword
fighting. She is the creator of Girl With Short Hair, an essay collection and one-woman show
based on her stories, memories, and adventures, drawn from a lifetime of thwarting
categorization and challenging society’s fixation on boxing people in to avoid figuring them out.