From Oranmore to NYC: Michaela O’ Shaughnessy
Michaela O’Shaughnessy leads editorial content for Instagram’s @creators account. Originally from Oranmore, she lives in New York.
My day starts around 6am and, depending on if I’m working in the office that day, I’ll usually try and take a pilates class before starting my work day at 9am, or, if I’m working from home, I usually pop on a podcast and take my dog, Duke, for a long walk in Central Park.
I fell into working in social media accidentally. When I first moved to New York I had intended on finding a marketing role and shared my resume with several recruiting companies; through one of those I landed a job running MTV’s Instagram and I think the only reason I got that job was because the hiring manager could look at my own presence on social media and see that I had a creative eye and a point of view, so it all happened pretty serendipitously!
From there I went on to run social at Teen Vogue, then Glamour magazine, working for fellow Irish lady, Sam Barry, and then was recruited to Instagram where I’ve now been for over five years.
Career highlights: Met Gala, fashion weeks and A-list collaborations
I’ve been lucky to have multiple pinch-me moments in my career so far, from working at the Met Gala for three years, to multiple fashion weeks and shooting content with major artists like Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran and many more. But I think the most impactful experience so far has been coming to Instagram, building an amazing team and developing our @creators brand from scratch and seeing it flourish over the years to now having nearly 20 million followers.
Nothing brings me more joy than beautiful stationery so my Papier weekly planner is always by my deskside.
I love working with creators and learning how impactful Instagram has been in their lives. Whether it has given them a platform to raise awareness for a cause that’s important to them, or leveraging the community they’ve built to launch an exciting business venture.
I also love working with our product teams and being part of the conversation as new features and tools are being developed.
Key skills for success in social media
Finding the right work life balance is something I find challenging at times. It often feels like there are never enough hours in the day to get through my to-do list! I’m working on trying to implement better boundaries and being present and off my phone as much as possible after working hours.
Being collaborative and a strong communicator is key, this is especially true as I work with many people from different disciplines like comms, product and marketing. I’m also usually juggling multiple projects at once, so being organised and able to efficiently project manage definitely helps.
To some extent this is my plan B career (even though I never really planned for any of this!). When I was younger I really wanted to study medicine and become a doctor. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be and everything worked out just great – I manage to get my medical fix from Grey’s Anatomy reruns.