About Michael Ashford

I’ve been a communications and marketing executive for more than a decade. I’m the Director of Marketing at The Receptionist, the Head Speaker Coach at TEDxManitouSprings, and I’m currently working on my Master’s in Mass Communication from Kansas State University.

But before my marketing and speaking career, I was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor at The Emporia Gazette in Emporia, Kansas.

My years as a journalist sharpened my interviewing skills and taught me just how important listening and asking follow-up questions is to get the full, real story.

If my experience has taught me anything, it’s that the world would be a better place if more of us thought like interviewers rather than as members of a debate team.

I consider myself an independent journalist these days, digging below the surface of clichés and clickbaity headlines to uncover nuance and detail that lives within the most important issues we face these days. I love a good follow-up question for exactly this reason!

I’ve interviewed professional athletes and Ivy League professors, CEOs and entrepreneurs, pilots and scientists, TV stars and activists, Olympians and doctors and many more. My aim is to remove assumptions and opinions from the questions I ask; and instead, let my guest’s stories reveal themselves within their answers.

I’ve found podcasting, reading, researching, and writing to be amazing ways to connect with my journalism roots and have important and interesting discussions with people who deserve to be heard.