Helaina Hovitz Regal
YOUR IMPACT MATTERS HERE
As a seasoned journalist and author, Helaina specializes in storytelling for social good. Her mission is to empower businesses and nonprofits to share impactful narratives that resonate with their audience and promote positive change.
How do you get people to care as much about your impact as you do? It comes down to what you share—and how you share it.​ Helaina translates your mission into stories of connection, so that people don’t just understand what you do, they feel it. She brings your work to life through clear, story-driven messaging that reaches the right people at the right time, making sure your mission is recognized in a human, forward-facing, and compelling way so that people see, feel, and engage with the good you’re doing. Because when people see the helpers, they connect. And when they connect, they act.
Bold & Forward-Facing
In addition to her editorial leadership, Helaina has published hundreds of bylines across major national and digital outlets, covering culture, social impact, and the human stories behind the headlines. Her work and insights have also reached audiences beyond the page through thoughtful, engaging appearances on television and radio, where she brings clarity, empathy, and depth to complex conversations. Across platforms, her voice is trusted for making ideas accessible, meaningful, and deeply human.
Stories of Social Good
Helaina has dedicated her life to telling stories that shine a light on people and projects making the world a better place.
From grassroots nonprofits to inspiring individuals and to bold social change initiatives, she's captured the moments that show hope, creativity, and impact in action.
Explore her work in Forbes, Huffington Post, Vice, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, Fortune, Reader's Digest, Glamour and many more.
Hope & Healing: Matters of Mental Health
Through her writing and public speaking, Helaina connects with audiences of all ages using humor, vulnerability, and candid storytelling to bring hope and solutions to complex challenges. Helaina offers insights that support both personal growth and clinical understanding. Her mission is to normalize mental health conversations, provide resources for those navigating the landscape, and inspire resilience, empathy, and healing.
Helaina was just 12 years old and in school three blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 when she witnessed the towers collapse, ran through clouds of debris, and spent months surviving in a neighborhood turned war zone. Her memoir explores the lasting, undiagnosed impact of PTSD—not only as a personal reckoning, but as a reflection of the invisible scars carried by a generation. At its core, After 9/11 is a story of resilience, recovery, and hope, tracing a child’s navigation of trauma and a young woman’s gradual movement toward healing.
Meet Helaina:
Helaina is a Native New Yorker and proud rescue dog mom who brings heart, humor, and curiosity to everything she does. Her love of spotlighting the good has always guided her work, and she believes wholeheartedly in the transformative power of kindness. Helaina is committed to looking for the helpers, especially in the darkest of times.​
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Her bylines can be found in Forbes, Huffington Post, The New York Times, Salon, Newsday, Teen Vogue, Glamour, Chicago Tribune, VICE, Thrillist, Newsweek, Prevention, Reader's Digest, New York Observer, BuzzFeed, Greatist, Gothamist, The LA Times, SCENE Magazine, Narratively, PBS's Next Avenue, Business Insider, Fortune, HEALTH, Upworthy, Stamford Courant, The Advocate, Psych Central, Fast Company, Women's Health, Tasting Table, The Daily Meal and more. She previously served as Editor of Branded Content at Upworthy/GOOD and Managing Editor of The Good News Network.
Helaina's story—and her book, After 9/11—has been featured by CBS, PBS Newshour, The TODAY Show, 1010Wins, PEOPLE, New York 1, WPIX11, The Atlantic, Psych Central, SHAPE, NBC, Epoch Times, CTV (Canada) Wall Street Journal, The Australian TODAY Show, VOX News, Scholastic Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and the Toronto Star.​​
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Why Work With Her?​​
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Helaina's deep sense of empathy is both a superpower and a vulnerability. Having lived through more darkness than most, she has always worked relentlessly to find hope anywhere and everywhere. That's what shaped her life’s purpose: writing about the helpers and the good they do in the world, especially when it feels like we're living in an unbearably broken one.
In college, she began her career as a journalist with the specific purpose of telling inspirational and meaningful stories, carving out a path in what has often been a difficult and less celebrated corner of media. To her, the most important stories are those that carry narratives with a ton of heart and a great deal of substance, ones that resonate emotionally with audiences instead of reporting on facts and logistics. Crafted and told with care, passion, and emotional truth, her work centers on showing, not telling, people about how meaningful your impact is. ​
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Helaina has also worked in Public Relations and Media Outreach, and understands what journalists and editors consider when it comes to covering your story. She knows how to pitch and position stories so that they resonate beyond “you should care because we think this this matters,” and taps into a deeply human, personal connection that makes people want to care.
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You’ll learn quickly that she won’t just produce deliverables. She gets personally invested in the people, relationships, and causes you introduce her to almost instantly. She cares deeply, and that care shows, making your collaboration far less transactional and much more authentic and enjoyable.
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Anything Else I Should Know?
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Outside of writing and strategy, she runs a small knit design business that raises money for animal rescue and serves as a mental health advocate and speaker. In her free time, she volunteers with causes close to her heart, paints in bold colors with reckless abandon, reads too many books at once, binges horror movies, and makes her friends laugh until they cry.
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