Michaela Pettway
New York, NY
Her Story
About Michaela
My career has been a bit of a happy accident. I started out in public relations, doing work that was highly journalistic and digital in nature. I found out really early that I just really liked jobs and projects that involved a mixture of skill sets - I liked being creative and strategic, as well as technical in what I did. From there, I moved into communications roles, which allowed me to have that wide diversity as far as the types of projects I could work on. Just through picking a bunch of roles like that, I ended up in my current role, where I get to do just that - I get to onboard organizations onto new technologies, which is the technological aspect, but I also get to problem-solve using those technologies, and that's the creative part of the work that I do. I work in the digital space, essentially listening to any problems that organizations might have and trying to solve those problems using new emerging technology. For instance, in my current role at a bank, they wanted to give their content to a wider range of people beyond their corporate LinkedIn page and social media pages. So I built out social media advocacy programs using technology to help roll it out across organizations. Even when I think about the work I did at data annotation, I was just listening to organizations talk about the gaps that they had, and then I used AI tools to help fill those gaps.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Michaela
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think the most rewarding thing about my career has been getting to test my resilience. I recently had a really good friend of mine describe me as relentlessly resilient when we were talking about my career and just how varied it is - I've gone through so many different roles and so many different projects. Along the way in my career, I've hit some blockers sometimes, and I've definitely been challenged. But I think that's probably the most rewarding thing about my career - getting to see myself face a challenge, and more often than not, succeed. Even if there was a situation where maybe something might not have gone the way that I wanted it to, I took it as an opportunity to learn and pivot successfully. I also attribute my success to being resourceful. Even though early on in my career, I was nowhere near program management work, which is what I do now, I still managed to gain a lot of the tools and the skills that would be foundational in what I do now, 10 years out. I was resourceful early on - despite being in just small internships or entry-level roles, I maximized every opportunity that was available to me there. Sometimes I would reach outside of my role, or even outside of my department, and ask for an opportunity to experiment, or ask for an opportunity to work on a different project.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
One bit of advice I'd have is to be resourceful. What I mean by that is, even though early on in my career, I was nowhere near program management work, which is what I do now, I still managed to gain a lot of the tools and the skills that would be foundational in what it is that I do now, 10 years out. I attribute a lot of my success now to the fact that I was resourceful early on. Despite being in just small internships or entry-level roles, I maximized every opportunity that was available to me there. Sometimes I would reach outside of my role, or even outside of my department, and ask for an opportunity to experiment, or ask for an opportunity to work on a different project. That's something that I would definitely recommend that someone starting out who wants a career like mine should do - be resourceful, and try to just suck out as much as you can out of every opportunity that's given to you, or that you can find.
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