Informing the Masses

Ashley Killough, B.A. ’09, calls herself a storyteller. Through journalism and international studies, she has always been a curious person — curious about the world, the people in it and how they interact with each other across divides. 

Killough’s time at Baylor prepared her for a career in curiosity, storytelling and connecting people with stories that matter. Upon graduation, she spent a year in Armenia through the Fulbright program as a research intern at the Caucasus Media Institute in Yerevan. She continued studies via a master’s in broadcast journalism at Columbia University and, from there, she followed a politics fellowship at CNN to Washington, D.C., where she began to write and report for their political blog, “The Political Ticker.”

As the 2016 presidential campaign began, CNN sent Killough on the campaign trail, where she traveled extensively to follow 17 Republican candidates along their campaign tour stops. 

“You become a database of information about the candidates,” Killough said. “You track everything they say so that you can 
flag when something is new or contradictory to something they said previously.” 

Killough covered policy and politics in both chambers of Congress after the 2016 election and has been in her current role as a senior producer at CNN Dallas since September 2019. 

“As my career as a storyteller has advanced, I realized there’s a lot more stories out there to tell,” Killough said. “I felt drawn to some of the stories our correspondents were doing and wanted to get more of that experience under my belt.”

In the ever-changing and challenging landscape of journalism, Killough is cheering for the next generation of journalists. Her advice to them is rooted in the valuable experiences that began as an undergraduate at Baylor. 

“Be as adaptable as possible; be as curious as possible,” Killough said. “Never say no to an opportunity because you will always learn something.”