- January 10, 2025
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Paula MacDonald founded PR firm Image Suite in 2013. In addition to day-to-day operations at the firm, she works in contracting and consulting roles for other PR organizations in the Tampa Bay area.
Skateboarding. When MacDonald isn’t crafting messaging or strategizing a brand’s communications plan, she’s practicing tricks like “rock to fakie” and bringing girls and women of all ages together at skate parks around Tampa Bay through her nonprofit Girls Sk8. It all started when she bought herself an Alien Workshop skateboard from Anchor Skate Supply in St. Pete for her 53rd birthday in 2022. (Although new to skateboarding, MacDonald was once a nationally ranked BMX biker sponsored by Vans as a teenager.)
“I don't know that I'll ever be a wonderful street skater with all these tricks at my age, but I'm out here. I'm loving it. It's great stress relief. It's great [and] gives you a great sense of focus,” MacDonald says.
Not tricky: For MacDonald, learning how to do certain tricks and stunts is nice, but it’s not the end-all-be-all of the sport. Becoming confident in finding your flow, especially around other skilled skaters is important. “You learn a trick, and then you lose it, then you get it back. It's just a constant, constant development,” she says.
Crossing the streams: When she first started going to the skatepark, she learned there used to be a meetup group for girls before Covid. She was told there was demand, but no one to run it. “I'm not a great skateboarder,” MacDonald insists, “but I am in PR marketing, and I can organize an event.”
“We were trying to get the girls meetup back on the schedule,” says Tim Gasiorski, MacDonald’s instructor and an employee of Skatepark of Tampa. “We needed some momentum, but we needed someone, I guess, at the helm of it, because we didn't have someone and then Paula came and saved the day.”
Bigger ambitions: MacDonald says she always knew it would be more than a monthly meetup, although it's been doing well as exactly that since she started in January 2024. A recent tally totaled 250 girls and women had joined throughout the year.
During her time leading the group, MacDonald notes each age bracket brings their board to the ramp for different reasons. For kids, it’s the opportunity to learn a new skill. For teens and young adults, it’s the community connection and for older skaters, it’s about discovering a sense of self trying something new. The decision to create a 501 (c) (3) for skateboarding girls was made with programming and funding in mind. As of now, MacDonald is bootstrapping the operation from the top down — including on-site snacks.
Safety first: Although this new skill is adventurous and an opportunity available to anyone, there remain some considerations to be made as a working adult. “Relating back to the business aspects of things, you know, I have clients that I'm responsible for helping them run their businesses. So I feel like I need to be responsible [for] myself while I'm out here,” MacDonald says, noting, “Wrist guards are very important.”
All ages: With the first skateboard being designed in the 1950s, according to the Olympics website (which debuted the sport in 2020 at the Tokyo games), what was once relegated to one group — essentially young men — is now a multi-generational, mixed gender event, sometimes involving entire families. “The beauty of skateboarding is, like, you know, you can skate realistically at any age,” Gasiorski says. Right on, dude.
Brave new world: The community and bond shared over skateboarding is more than a diversion; there is healing via a new way of getting back to old social habits. “There was something that happened after 2020. Just that isolation for a while that made it hard to get kind of back into the world and back into things,” MacDonald says, “So I found skateboarding post [Covid], and it allowed me to kind of regain my sanity in some regards, of just being able to get out and be around people and do something that was completely different from what I do day to day.”
