Women Leading in Tech: Lara Michaud
In the lead-up to the 2026 Summit for Women in Tech, we’re sharing Women Leading in Tech Executive Spotlights to celebrate the achievements of female tech leaders across our state.
We're proud to feature Lara Michaud, who leads marketing at Elevate Digital, a people-first AI-enabled business transformation company. Her role sits at the intersection of brand, growth, technology, and customer experience, where she shapes go-to-market strategy while building the systems and stories that connect what the company does to the people who need it. A passionate advocate for mentorship and women's growth in tech, Lara is moderating a conversation on allyship at this year's Summit for Women in Tech.
More About Lara
I lead marketing at Elevate Digital, a people-first, AI-enabled business transformation company. My role sits at the intersection of brand, growth, technology and customer experience, helping shape how we go to market while building the systems, stories and experiences that connect what we do to the people who need it.
What I love most is that marketing gives me permission to be both creative and analytical. One minute I’m thinking about brand and storytelling, the next I’m digging into technology, data, AI or how we can create a better customer experience.
Biggest Influences
I fell into tech the way I’ve fallen into most things in my career: following my curiosity and a desire to keep growing and learning new things.
For a long time, the pace of media and entertainment, and New York itself, had me hooked. Then it was sports. Each chapter gave me something new to learn and a completely different world to figure out.
But the person who really got me invested in technology was my last boss, Fletch. He gave me the opportunity to work directly with Engineering, which I had never done before.
That changed something for me.
I had spent years marketing products and experiences. Suddenly, I was part of the building. I could sit with engineers, understand how something worked, ask why it worked that way, help think through the customer experience and actually influence what we created.
Once I got to be part of the building, I was hooked.
Now, with technology and AI changing so quickly, it feels like there is always another thing to learn, another problem to solve and another version of what’s possible.
If you swap roles with another woman in tech, who would it be?
I don’t know that I’d switch roles with anyone.
You never really know what someone else is carrying, even when their life looks incredible from the outside. I’ve come to believe we all get our own version of hard, and I wouldn’t trade my circumstances for someone else’s without knowing the whole story.
What I would happily trade for is a really long dinner table with a few women I’d love to learn from and laugh with.
Mel Robbins comes to mind immediately. Ali Wong too. I’m drawn to women who are smart, funny, candid and completely themselves. I’d want the kind of dinner where we talk about careers and ambition for five minutes, life for twenty, and then laugh until someone makes us leave the restaurant.
How is Elevate Digital supporting women in the tech workforce?
One of the things I really appreciate about Elevate is that they are actively investing in the team. Every member of our leadership team has had the opportunity to work with a mentor or coach, and I think that kind of investment matters.
I’m also incredibly excited about what’s starting to take shape specifically for women at Elevate. My teammate Brittany, who is also part of our leadership team and came all the way from Colorado to join me at the Summit for Women in Tech, recently started a committee with me and our head of HR focused on creating more mentorship and sponsorship opportunities for the women in our organization.
Like any growing company, there is still more work to do. But the heart is there, and so is the intention.
I think representation matters tremendously, but getting someone into the room is really only step one. They also need to feel empowered to speak, lead, challenge ideas and actually have influence once they’re there.
Greatest Professional Success + Accomplishment
My greatest professional achievement has been learning how to stay fully myself in environments that can make that difficult: to be soft and creative and still tough, to move through hard moments without losing my kindness or humor, and to hold onto the wildness in me that keeps me grounded.
Summit for Women in Tech Highlights
This year I’m moderating a conversation around “Allyship: Why Men Matter in Women’s Growth + Development,” which is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot.
Careers are almost never built by one person.
Mentors matter. Sponsors matter. Peers matter. And sometimes the person who changes the trajectory of your career is someone who says your name in a room you weren’t invited into yet.
That’s one of the things I really like about the Summit. You have women at completely different stages of their careers in the same room, and everybody has something to learn from somebody else.
It also gives us space to talk about the things that don’t always make it into the normal workday conversations: confidence, career pivots, leadership, being heard, advocating for yourself and helping other women along the way.
Sometimes just realizing, “Wait, you’ve experienced that too?” is incredibly powerful.
Book Recommendations, Spending Time Outdoors & a Go-To Quote
Book Recommendations
I’m always reading something, and a few books are firmly on my “you have to read this” list.
The 4 Disciplines of Execution is super helpful when things get messy. It’s a framework we’re honing in on at Elevate to bring more focus to our work as the company grows. I’m also incredibly fortunate to have Jim Huling, one of the authors, as a coach, which makes the reading come to life in a completely different way.
If you haven’t read The Unicorn Leader yet, you need to. It came into my world through the author, Kristi Straw, who is also a keynote at the Summit. She has taught me so much about being a strong woman, leading with character, and what it looks like to truly show up for other people.
Last, but certainly not least, please read Unreasonable Hospitality. It has left me with one of my favorite stories.
Adam Morgan, my CEO, gave me the book before I joined Elevate, and it actually became one of the reasons I said yes. The ideas around culture, leadership and being remarkable by giving remarkably felt like a reflection of the company he was trying to build. I remember finishing it and thinking, “I want to work with people who think this way.”
One more for anyone navigating change but not quite sure where they want to go: Designing Your Life. This book found me at a time when I really needed it. It taught me to look at all the different responsibilities and experiences I’d collected over my career, figure out what I genuinely loved about them, and start crafting my choices around those things.
Funny enough, I’ve recently stopped reading much fiction because I’ve started to find the real world more interesting than it’s ever been.
Favorite Way to Spend a Day Of
Doing something I haven’t done before or something creative.
Every day, something reminds me that this life is short and opportunities are rare. So if I get asked to try a new food, go somewhere I haven’t been, see something new or experience something completely outside my normal routine, I’m usually all over it.
Especially if there’s a live performance involved.
I love discovering new music, seeing artists I’ve never seen before and having those little moments where you think, 'I feel alive today in my bones'.
Favorite Quote
I have a lot of those. Probably the most valuable one that I love and has use every day, "Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Not in a mean way."
Lara’s story reflects what makes a strong tech community: curiosity, authenticity and a commitment to helping others grow. Her perspective on mentorship, allyship and creating space for more voices to lead is a reminder that building a stronger tech workforce takes all of us—and conversations like these are exactly why the Summit for Women in Tech matters.
Learn more about this year's Summit for Women in Tech, September 28-29, this year in Asheville, HERE!
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