Her Story
About Michaela
Michaela Copeland serves as the Social Media Lead at House, an agency for deep tech startups, where she has worked since April 2026. In this role, she manages social media strategies for four to five clients, handling LinkedIn and X accounts, thought leadership content, graphics, video editing, analytics, and competitive analysis. She also runs What to Eat Huntsville, a popular foodie page on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube with over 17,000 followers, where she creates weekly videos showcasing local restaurants in Huntsville, Alabama. Copeland earned her Bachelor's degree in Communication from Mississippi State University in 2019 and her Master's in Advertising and Public Relations from the University of Alabama in 2021. A LaGrant Foundation scholar, she attributes her success to strong mentors, including an early internship at NASA in high school and guidance from professionals like Angela Story and Nicole Whiteborn. She values openness, transparency, and effective communication in both her professional and personal life, and advises young women entering the field to take their time and avoid unnecessary urgency.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Michaela
01What do you attribute your success to?
Definitely the mentors that I've had along the way. I've had a really great network and foundation from the beginning. I started out pretty young, like I interned at NASA in high school and got to shadow Angela Story, one of the communications leads there. I've always had really strong female representatives leading me along the way. Nicole Whiteborn was a big advocator for me trying to be creative.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Definitely probably just taking a chill pill and listening. Younger me was very wanting to know the information now and kind of just more abrupt in my thinking. Over time I've grown to know that there's no rush. She was like, Michaela, I'm gonna get to your answer if you just listen. I take a lot more time with myself to actually take in what somebody's saying before I respond.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Maybe just like taking your time. Communications can come off as a very fast-paced environment which it is, but I feel like there's a balance that you can also slow down with yourself and not feed into that hamster wheel. It's important to have that down time and notice we're not brain surgeons or rocket scientists. If you have a deadline that you feel like you can't meet or you feel rushed, it's okay to speak for yourself and say this is too rushed because sometimes we feel like we need to meet other people's obligations pretty fast and it's not necessary all the time to have that urgency.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now my current battle is with AI. There's all the misconceptions. Content has been a little bit more challenging to make with this whole idea of AI, and prioritize when to use it, when not to use it, how much to use it, noticing the tropes. There's so many debates right now about how AI is affecting graphics or video or even the caption itself. Sometimes we may overthink the usage a little bit.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think definitely openness and transparency. When people are honest and really good about communicating what they want and what they need, and even yourself communicating that. Transparency and honesty is something I value a lot especially coming early into my career. Another one would probably be just good communication. That kind of ties to the openness and transparency but communication is definitely important especially early in your career advocating for yourself and also advocating for your team or the projects you're working on.
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