About Michael Ashford

Hello. My name is Michael, and I am a communications explorer and a tireless optimist.

I envision a world where your heart is more reachable through curious conversations, where you are able to better articulate and share your perspective (even if you don’t think you have something to share), and where you replace clichés and surface-level insights into deeper, more meaningful stories.

Chances are your education failed you — as it did most of us — when it comes to understanding how to communicate well.

My podcast, my speaking, my writing, and my coaching are ways of exploring and sharing how we can communicate well with each other and reverse the trends that have us struggling and thrashing to truly connect.

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 in August 2024, I received my Master of Science 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.

Podcast appearances

Negotiate Anything — Can I Ask A Question? with Michael Ashford
Curiosity Invited — From Conflict To Community - The Value of Having Those Difficult Conversations
How to Heal Our Divides — A Conversation with Michael Ashford
All Things Private Practice — Lead With Curiosity to Effect Change
Hit Publish — How to Become a Top 1% Interviewer
Negotiate Anything — How to TRULY communicate for Understanding with Michael Ashford
Mirror Talk — Being a Better Listener and Communicating with Emotional Intelligence

My family and I live in the Denver, Colo., area where I am the Director of Marketing at The Receptionist. I enjoy hiking, weight lifting, cooking, reading, making pop-culture movie references, and watching re-runs of Seinfeld, Brooklyn 99, and Community.