Ashley Westerman
Ashley Westerman is a producer who occasionally directs the show. Since joining the staff in June 2015, she has produced a variety of stories including a coal mine closing near her hometown, the 2016 Republican National Convention, and the Rohingya refugee crisis in southern Bangladesh. She is also an occasional reporter for Morning Edition, and NPR.org, where she has contributed reports on both domestic and international news.
Ashley was a summer intern in 2011 with Morning Edition and pitched a story on her very first day. She went on to work as a reporter and host for member station 89.3 WRKF in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she earned awards covering everything from healthcare to jambalaya.
Ashley is an East-West Center 2018 Jefferson Fellow and a two-time reporting fellow with the International Center for Journalists. Through ICFJ, she has covered labor issues in her home country of the Philippines for NPR and health care in Appalachia for Voice of America.
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Drive-in movie theaters are making a bit of a comback amid the pandemic. And people are going, even just to reclaim a bit of of their Saturday nights back.
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A new CEO is steering a company that's seen years of slumping revenues and whose home market of Japan has an aging population. But "don't count out Hello Kitty," says an author of a book about Sanrio. -
The company says it didn't intend to suggest that fairness or white was "better than your own unique skin tone." Other major companies have announced changes to advertising tactics seen as racist. -
The St. Paul, Minn., native trained to be a police officer — because he wanted to help. To him, the cops were the good guys. But what once felt like a calling to wear a badge ended long ago. -
George Floyd's death isn't just a story about a black man and the white cop charged with his murder. Among Asian Americans, the involvement of Hmong officer Tou Thao is stirring a racial debate. -
Minnesota state Rep. Ruth Richardson doesn't want her teenage son, Shawn, a track athlete, to go running outside. "You can't do the same things that your white friends do," she remembers telling him. -
Webster County High School officials couldn't hold the big annual graduation event in the gym this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic — so the idea for a drive-through graduation was born. -
Starting Monday, the Southeast Asian country will open some schools and more businesses. It will also allow its citizens to travel domestically. -
The group, mostly women and children, had been stranded at sea for weeks. Human rights groups have long decried the government's plan to send refugees to flood- and cyclone-prone Bhasan Char island. -
Health experts say low rates of testing and refusal to enact strict lockdowns have allowed the virus to infiltrate all 34 provinces of the archipelago nation.
