June Meeting

Special Presentation From Tom Ashbrook

Tom Ashbrook is host of National Public Radio’s interview show “On Point”, produced by WBUR Boston. Tom was raised on an Illinois farm, studied history at Yale, and in India at Andrhra University. He worked as a surveyor and dynamiter in the Alaskan oilfields before taking his first job in news as a reporter for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. An award-winning journalist in print and broadcasting, he served as Tokyo bureau chief, foreign editor and deputy managing editor at the Boston Globe. He spent ten years in Asia, and has reported as a foreign correspondent from hotspots around the world: Beijing, Moscow, Manila, the Balkans, Rwanda, Somalia and more.

In 1995, Ashbrook was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. The following year he co-founded the $70 million Internet start-up HomePortfolio.com, a venture chronicled in his 2000 book The Leap. (“A great adventure tale,” says USA Today) In September, 2001, he was enlisted by NPR to host emergency coverage of the 9.11 terrorist attacks. That coverage grew into the award-winning news and interview program, “On Point”. “On Point” now airs on more than 150 stations coast-to-coast and globally on XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. Its top audience ratings have made it the fastest-growing talk show on NPR.

Tom lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife Danielle Guichard-Asbrook, dean of international students at MIT.