Building a Family-First PR Agency in the Age of AI

On a recent podcast episode of Human at the Helm , I had the opportunity to sit down with host Veronica Markol to discuss my journey building TaleSplash in the age of AI. 

I spent years building my career in public relations, agencies, and corporate roles.

Like so many people during the pandemic, I suddenly had time to pause, reflect, and observe what was happening in the world around me.

I found that listening to real-time news updates was grounding and incredibly helpful. At the same time, I kept thinking: What an interesting moment to build a PR agency from scratch.

I had done this before—most notably while building PR programs from the ground up at TripIt—but this time felt different. I began asking myself a bigger question: What if I could create an agency truly centered on helping founders tell their stories? 

I had always been drawn to podcasts like How I Built This and to publications that explored how companies came to life. 

Those origin stories—the human moments behind the business—were what fascinated me most.

That idea became the foundation of TaleSplash.

Building a PR Agency With Purpose

As I built TaleSplash, I also discovered something unexpected: I could design a business that worked around my family’s needs. 

Even more importantly, I could create an environment that allowed other women on the team to do the same: to grow their careers without sacrificing their families. That flexibility and intention have been central to how I’ve built the company and continues to shape everything we do.

There’s plenty of data showing that the PR industry skews heavily female. But beyond the numbers, I’ve found that intentionally building a fully remote agency—one designed around my own needs as a mother of young children—has been a powerful way to attract other women who need that same flexibility.

Whenever I share the why behind building this kind of company, I hear from mothers who’ve experienced incredibly difficult work environments—places where asking for true balance between work and life felt risky or even discouraged. Being vocal about valuing that balance matters because it signals to other parents that it’s not only accepted, but built into the culture.

This is especially relevant now as so many companies push for a return to the office. For parents, managing school drop-offs, pickups, after-school activities, and commutes can be incredibly challenging. Flexibility isn’t a perk—it’s a necessity. The more openly I’ve talked about that, the more women I’ve been able to attract to the team who are looking for a genuinely family-friendly environment.

Many of the women who’ve joined TaleSplash are people I worked with years ago, before any of us had children. Now we’re reconnecting at a different stage of life, bringing decades of combined PR experience into a remote, flexible model that works for our families. 

That depth of expertise is a huge advantage for clients who value seasoned professionals and also understand that there may be moments when we’re stepping away to feed our kids or put them to bed.

It’s a model rooted in trust, experience, and humanity. And it’s one I believe represents the future of work in PR.

The Human Work Behind the Brands We Support

As a first-time business owner, I had to learn the hard way that we’re not for everyone, and not everyone is for us. That clarity doesn’t come overnight – it comes with experience.

Over time, we’ve gotten much clearer about the qualities of the clients who’ve stayed with us the longest and  truly see us as partners. They’re collaborative, patient, and understand that PR isn’t transactional. You don’t see ROI on day one—and that’s just the reality of the work.

What’s helped us most is getting honest about where we’re genuinely passionate, have deep experience, and see sustained media interest. 

Women’s health, for example, continues to be a major growth area, one that has weathered economic shifts that have impacted other industries. It’s not a trend; it’s a lasting and necessary focus. The data alone is compelling, especially when you consider how many women will enter menopause over the next decade.

My work with the American Heart Association was especially influential in shaping this focus. It inspired me to lean more intentionally into women’s health as an agency priority. 

Along the way, we’ve supported a wide range of companies across technology, healthcare, and consumer products, but what consistently energizes us are brands we can personally relate to and products and services we would actually use ourselves.

That’s where our passion truly lies.

Whether it’s skincare, heart health, menopause care, or fertility solutions, we’re especially well suited to work with companies whose missions are deeply human. 

These are the brands that benefit most from the credibility and validation that comes from earned media. When journalists lend their stamp of approval, it helps companies reach consumers, partners, and investors who are critical to scaling their businesses.

What AI Can (and Can’t) Do for Modern PR

When I started the company nearly five years ago, AI-powered tools were already beginning to shape the PR landscape. Platforms like Qwoted stood out immediately. Compared to earlier media-request marketplaces, where you’d receive multiple newsletters a day and sift through endless journalist queries with little visibility, this felt like a far more efficient and transparent experience.

Before tools like this, you never really knew what happened after you hit “send.” Had dozens of other PR professionals already responded? Did the journalist even need more sources? There was no insight into whether your pitch would be seen or considered at all. AI-powered platforms changed that by improving the matchmaking process between journalists and PR teams.

Today, that same kind of intelligent matchmaking is happening in podcasting. We're big fans of PodPitch, which helps connect podcast hosts and producers with experts when there’s a clear topic, story angle, or need. It streamlines discovery and makes it easier for the right conversations to happen at the right time.

That said, this is where AI’s role ends and where human expertise begins.

AI isn’t going to show up on a podcast and give a thoughtful interview. It’s not going to provide original expert insights to a journalist. While AI can help facilitate connections, the substance still comes from people: founders, subject-matter experts, and storytellers who bring lived experience and credibility to the table.

In that sense, AI is a powerful enabler, but the real work still belongs to humans. Journalists and podcast producers ultimately rely on authentic voices and real expertise to tell meaningful stories, and that’s something technology can support, but never replace.

Everyone has a different comfort level with AI. Some of our clients are pushing us to adopt AI as much as possible because they see the efficiency gains firsthand, often encouraging us to lean into it even more than we already are.

However, there are very real limitations when it comes to content creation in PR. While many people are using AI to write LinkedIn posts, emails, or marketing copy, we can’t use AI-generated content for media requests. Journalists aren’t allowed to include AI-written responses in their stories, nor can they rely on AI to write those stories either. The insights, quotes, and expertise we provide must be original and come directly from the human source.

This is where intentionality matters. The value we bring to journalists has to be authentic, informed, and distinctly human.

Why AI Could Redefine How PR Proves Its Value

Where I see the greatest opportunity for AI in PR is in an area the industry has long struggled with: measurement and impact. 

For years, measuring the true value of PR has been difficult. So much of the work involves earning attention—pitching journalists, securing podcast placements, and building credibility—and those efforts don’t always translate neatly into trackable metrics.

Historically, PR impact was often tied to SEO. A media feature might improve search rankings or drive traffic, but attribution was never perfectly clear. Now, that landscape is changing. Large language models (LLMs) are pulling from press releases, podcasts, articles, and other forms of earned media to surface recommendations in response to user queries. 

Journalism and earned media continue to play a critical role here: the majority of links cited by AI are non-paid coverage, with roughly 25% of citations coming from journalistic sources. 

After more than 20 years in the industry, this shift feels transformative. Measurement has always been manual, imperfect, and hard to prove. If LLMs can help demonstrate how earned media influences discovery, trust, and decision-making, it could finally bring PR measurement into a more credible, data-driven future.

PR has always been a long game. I often compare it to playing golf: you have to put in the reps, knowing that some days will go better than others. Much of the process is outside our control. 

At its core, PR is still about people telling meaningful stories through authentic voices—and that’s something no technology can automate away. It doesn't replace the relationships, expertise, and credibility that earned media is built on.

If you’re ready to tell authentic stories but don’t have the time to manage the research and outreach, our team can help. Book some time with us and let us help you make a Splash!