Missa grew up in West Boylston, Massachusetts, and now resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications with a minor in Art at Worcester State College. While a student at Worcester State, she won the Achievement Award in the Visual and Performing Arts Department.

Missa takes most of her work from photographs. Photography has been an interest of hers since elementary school, when she developed her first black and white photograph in the darkroom with her "mentor," Kim Johnson. Whatever she sees, she visualizes the photographic possibilities. These photographs are often the basis for her paintings. Missa's photograph, "Dali," has been published in Filters of the Imagination.

Although versatile in several media and subjects, human portraits and animal paintings, specifically parrots, make up the majority of Missa's artwork. Her own pet macaws, Monet and Dali, are constantly inspiring paintings that will capture their stunning beauty. She tries to express the mischievous yet graceful and highly intelligent characteristics of parrots within her paintings, while at the same time rendering their natural beauty.