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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The Philippines is losing restrictions on travel to the country. The change would affect tourists from 150 countries, including the U.S. where the largest diaspora of Filipinos live.
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In the Philippine capital Manila, people without proof of full vaccination or a work exemption can't take public transportation. Human rights activists say the policy discriminates against the poor.
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The flight arrived in Tonga five days after a massive underwater volcano erupted there – killing three people and leaving extensive tsunami damage and a blanket of fallen ash in its wake.
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Communications were still down across most of the Pacific Island nation of Tonga after a massive undersea volcano erupted over the weekend, making damage assessments difficult.
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An underwater volcano erupted Saturday near Tonga, sending tsunamis across the pacific basin.
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If you had to define 2021 with just one word what would it be? Merriam-Webster Editor-at-Large Peter Sokolowski talks about what words were most on people's minds throughout the year.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Thomas Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, about the preparations being made for the New Year's Eve celebration in New York City.
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Much of California is in the grips of extreme or exceptional drought. But the state may soon be blanketed by record levels of snow, after a series of storms finish parading through the western U.S.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Al Michaels of NBC Sports about football coach and sportscaster John Madden, who died Tuesday at the age of 85.
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NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with actress Maggie Gyllenhaal about her directorial debut The Lost Daughter, which takes a unique look at motherhood. Now in theaters, the film will be on Netflix on Dec. 31.
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Here's how their hospitals are doing nearly two years into the pandemic, what they are seeing in new omicron patients, and their thoughts on the wave of burnout affecting the industry. -
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with three nurses from around the country about how the omicron variant has affected their work and what their year has been like on the front lines of the pandemic.
