Hey Texas! My friend Ashley is coming to Texas Public Radio!

On By Feminist Asian Dad

I’m so excited for my great friend Ashley Alvarado, who’s heading to Texas soon as the new president and CEO of Texas Public Radio, which broadcasts from San Antonio to the Valley! (For my California peeps, that’s the Rio Grande Valley, not SoCal’s San Fernando Valley.)

For a number of years now, Ashley has been one of the top leaders at LAist (a public multimedia company formerly known as Southern California Public Radio), and she has played a huge part in making 89.3 FM into much more than a public radio station; I regard it as a true community of listeners across the LA-OC-Ventura-Riverside Counties region of Southern California. My many occasions of involvement with the station have often been with projects and teams that Ashley was leading or supporting, from the all-volunteer Regional Advisory Council to on-air panel discussions to community events where I got to tell my story as a minister-turned-sexual-violence-prevention-activist.

One of Ashley’s signature projects as Manager, Director, and later Vice President of Community Engagement & Strategic Initiatives was the powerful Unheard LA series, which took place at several venues around Southern California annually. At each event, several listeners shared compelling stories about their lives; my group here, the August 2018 bunch that spoke at Cal State Long Beach, had ten. Ashley (second row, just left of center) and Executive Director of Live Programming & Events Jon Cohn (tall dude in the middle) helped us to polish our remarks and prepare to speak in front of what was ultimately a lively and attentive crowd of 750. I’m in the back somewhere.

If memory serves me right, I first met Ashley at an event for the Asian American Journalists Association; she herself has both Asian and Hispanic heritage! Not only have we had lots of chances to work together, we’ve also had quite a few laughs and chats about parenting, race, community, and how news media can be so much more than a one-way funnel of information; it can bring listeners together to deepen our mutual understanding, even with – and maybe especially with – people that might otherwise seem too different from us.

This shows the audience at our Unheard LA event rising to give us speakers a standing ovation, but it sums up how I and so many of us connected with Ashley here in SoCal feel about her.

Texas, please welcome Ashley with open arms! She is a spectacularly good leader in the journalistic world – knowledgeable and thoughtful, compassionate and empathetic, fair and principled, innovative and practical, and visionary yet down to earth. Go Ashley go!!!

The press release announcing Ashley’s selection as Texas Public Radio’s new president and CEO is here.