Michelle Willard is the Public Relations & Marketing Senior Manager for Ronald McDonald House Charities Hawaii. Through her extensive communications experience and previous work as a top-rated news anchor, she offers in-depth knowledge to help the Ronald McDonald House make a transformational impact through public relations and marketing.
Michelle is nationally experienced and has lived all over the country working in the communications industry. In her role, she is responsible for all marketing and public relations campaigns as well as social media outreach. Throughout her career, Michelle has worked for multiple nonprofits, a public relations firm as well as news anchoring and reporting in different markets throughout the nation. Her work includes successfully rebranding nonprofits through creative and innovative marketing and communications strategies. Most recently she was the Vice President of Public Relations and Communications for the economic development leader in the State Capital of California. Through the development and execution of her communications strategy, she garnered global, national, and local media attention and held the largest press conference to date on behalf of the business community for the leading tech giant, Amazon.
Her results speak for themselves landing media placements in Bloomberg, Forbes, LA Times, CNBC, Business Insider, American Way Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, among other media publications. During her first year at the economic development group, she won an award from the California Association of Economic Development for a national digital media campaign.
Michelle is also a former number one rated television news anchor. She was a news anchor and reporter at both the CBS affiliate in Columbia, South Carolina and the ABC affiliate, KTXS News in Abilene, Texas. During her time in the news industry, she interviewed national and local business leaders and political figures, such as US Senator, Ted Cruz, among others. Additionally, while an anchor on the news desk, Michelle managed live breaking news situations.
Michelle uses the skills she gained in television news to help clients with unpredictable breaking news situations, navigating political shifts and preparing for taped and live broadcast interviews. She is an expert in all social media platforms including: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.