Michele White is an award-winning journalist. She has worked as a reporter for FOX23 in Tulsa and she was the Cedar Rapids reporter for KWWL, covering the second-largest city in Iowa. Michele also covered the fastest growing area of Alaska as the Matanuska-Susitna Valley bureau reporter for both FOX and ABC Alaska and KTUU in Anchorage. Michele started her television reporting career at KOMU in Columbia, Missouri, covering the Missouri legislature during the session and reporting for the consumer franchise, 8 On Your Side.

Michele also has two decades of experience writing for newspapers and magazines, including the Castro Valley Forum (San Francisco Bay, CA), Alaska Contractor,  Alaska Star, Alaska Business Monthly, Alaska Dispatch and Last Frontier magazine.  Her story, “Climbing Denali in January,” published in Last Frontier magazine, won a 2016 Alaska Press Club award for Best Outdoors Story, All Media.

She currently writes under the pseudonym Mikaela LeBlanc for Tulsa Kids magazine.

Michele also wrote portions of the re-branding web copy for Alaska Communications and its corporate newsletters for several years.

Originally from Boston, Michele earned her Bachelor of Journalism degree from the Missouri School of Journalism, world-renowned as the top journalism school. During her college years, Michele interned with the I-Team at CBS Boston, where she helped research a sweeps investigation of medical malpractice lawsuits in Boston.  Michele also interned as a producer for the Sunrise show at Sky News in London while studying abroad for a semester.

Some of Michele’s career highlights include exclusive interviews with two governors of Alaska; covering a contentious special session of the Alaska legislature that pitted two caucuses against each other; reporting the story of a missing veteran caught in an avalanche from the side of a mountain using a mobile phone; following the petition to recall a governor that was litigated all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court; working on a sex trafficking investigation that aired as an hour-long newscast special and investigating a mayoral candidate in Cedar Rapids who didn’t pay her taxes for three years and incurred judgments and liens spanning three states and 10 years.

Michele speaks French fluently, which was her minor in college. She also studied French in Paris and Cannes.  As a freelance writer, Michele interviewed a member of the French National Assembly, who helped author the controversial About-Picard law, that swiftly passed the National Assembly and received international criticism. Michele’s experience living in London and Paris shaped her world view and her reporting. 

Michele held the title of Miss Iowa for America 2021 and competed for the national title of Miss for America 2022 in Las Vegas.

During her reign as Miss Iowa for America, Michele read books to children at community events; shared with them the importance of self-love with her platform “Love Yourself First;” was a speaker at the Julien Dubuque Film Festival, did radio interviews and traveled to Mayfield, Kentucky to help with relief efforts after the December 2021 tornado that devastated Western Kentucky. 

Michele is writing a children’s book teaching children to Love Yourself First — her pageant platform — and a book with a similar title about her experiences surviving domestic abuse. Michele is preparing to compete in her next beauty pageant and pursuing both her Master’s degree in Business Administration and her Pilates instructor certification.