Her Story
About Flora
Flora Tsapovsky has been a freelance writer in the media industry for two decades. She writes about food, fashion, culture, design, and travel. Her interest in writing and storytelling began in childhood with nursery rhymes and short stories, and continued through college where she wrote for the college paper, sparking her interest in journalism. After college, she wrote about fashion and pop culture for websites while living in Israel, becoming a regular contributor to the Israeli media market and serving as a beauty editor at a women's website. Upon moving to California, she restarted her career in a new language and gradually built her presence in major U.S. publications. Notable achievements include writing for Vogue and publishing a timely article on how the AI industry affects the Bay Area hospitality scene for CAPER. Tsapovsky values curiosity, thinking outside the box, and professional integrity, including fact-checking and protecting the human elements of writing from AI overreach. She attributes her success to having original, cutting-edge ideas and being at the source of emerging projects and individuals.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Flora
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think every writer is just as good as their ideas. Having original cutting-edge ideas for stories that are adding to the conversation instead of repeating something is what keeps my career going. That and being at the source of things and knowing people who have interesting things in the work that I can write about before anybody else or inquiring what emerging projects or individuals are out there before the mainstream media got to them.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
First do a lot of reading and get to know the media landscape and find your favorite writers and people you admire whose point of view you think you can get behind. Learn the media landscape and who is the editor here and what publications are happening. Then try to apply yourself in ways that you haven't seen what's missing what story isn't told. Also get out there and get to know people like editors face-to-face and network.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There's a lot of artificial intelligence tools that can write pretty well and can replace you if you're doing boring repetitive listicles but what they cannot replace is your unique point of view your unique network of sources and your creative ideas. The opportunities are to rise above those threats and be a more excellent writer than you could ever be before and challenge yourself. There are also many interesting new media outlets thriving on innovative storytelling.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Curiosity is a major one. I want to go and experience stuff and know what's out there and not miss out on potentially incredible experiences. Thinking outside of the box or even wishful thinking is a big value. Professional integrity like fact-checking crediting sources properly not stealing people's ideas and not using AI to generate your ideas protecting what's human about the profession of writing.
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