Ashley Milne-Tyte

Ashley Milne-Tyte

I am a reporter, teacher, and podcast host. My background is in public radio, and on this site you'll find links to recent work in radio and print/online as well as the occasional blog post about whatever I'm thinking about or working on. 

These days I'm devoting most of my time to The Broad Experience, my podcast on women in the workplace, which I launched last year while studying on CUNY's entrepreneurial journalism program. You can listen here, at TheBroadExperience.com, or download the show from iTunes. In fact, please do.

Two recent pieces about The Broad Experience

May 15, 2013

I should have posted these earlier, but in recent weeks I've been featured on the Tumblr blog ReportHers and on Gorkana, the company that links journalists and PR people. Both pieces talk about The Broad Experience. The ReportHers piece is a short Q&A and the Gorkana piece explains why I'm doing the show, what I'm looking for from PR people and what my favorite podcasts are, among other things.

Metro column: Get a mentor

May 13, 2013

My second column for Metro came out today. This one focuses on the importance of mentorship to a woman's career. It's important for men too, of course, but it's harder for women to find mentors, because - generally - women seek women mentors, and there aren't enough senior women around to meet demand. 

Entrepreneurship diaries 13: how do you market a female-focused podcast?

May 8, 2013

As a podcast host, I'm coming up against something that's beginning to aggravate me. I'm working hard on regularly producing my podcast, The Broad Experience, which happens to be about a huge topic-du-jour, women in the workplace. It's a combination of storytelling and interviews and I launched the show a year ago while I was on CUNY's entrepreneurial journalism program. I had no idea then that Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg would soon send the conversation about women and work into the stratosphere. But so they have. 

Yet I'm not getting a big enough slice of their audience.

Despite gaining listeners and subscribers to my newsletter, receiving notes from individuals (including a couple of men) saying how much they like the show, and having the show regularly broadcast on Miami's public radio station and the Women's International News Gathering Service, download numbers could be much higher than they are. So what's going on?

I think there are a few possibilities.

1. I'm producing a lousy product. But unusually for me, with my typically female lack of confidence, I don't believe that. You, of course, are welcome to judge for yourself. If you're male, I wonder if you'll be interested anyway, which brings me to 
2. The fact that the majority of people who download podcasts are men. Some statistics put the numbers at just over half, but one recent number I saw, and it's killing me that I can't recall the source, stated that more than 70% of podcast listeners were male. Which puts me in a tricky position, because I realize my show's subject matter appeals mostly to women. I can tell by talking to a lot of women at networking events that they don't 'do' audio. It's just not on their radar. Either they do not consider themselves 'technical enough' to handle downloading a podcast, or they just never listen to the radio/audio of any kind, and are not about to start. 
3. Not enough people - even women - are actually interested in this topic of women and work and success to want to bother downloading a show on this, or maybe they think it'll be boring (it won't). But again, I'm skeptical that this is true. If they are happy to read reams about this stuff, why not listen, especially when my shows are generally short, at about 15-20 minutes? I think it's a problem of reach and scale. I have some incredibly loyal, engaged listeners. I just need more of them.

To market the show I tweet regularly, although any social media expert would say not enough, post each new show to Facebook, post lots of other stuff to Twitter and Facebook (much of it not my own, as I can't bear talking myself up the entire time I'm online), write a column on women's careers for Metro, write on the topic of women and work for Canadian magazine Women of Influence, go to networking events, speak at the occasional event or panel, and possibly some other things I'm forgetting in my current fog of jet-lag. What I think I need to do is get back on public radio as much as possible, reporting on women and work topics. And of course I could launch a Kickstarter campaign, something several people have suggested I do. I am considering it. What's holding me back is the planning (these campaigns require much thought before launch) and the thought of me sustaining myself through 30 days of interminable selling to friends, family and strangers, with various rounds of hope, despondency, etc. Not to mention what I would offer as rewards to backers...

What am I missing here? What am I not doing to drive downloads that I could be? 

The Broad Experience 17: Female in Silicon Valley

April 29, 2013

In this episode of the show I talk to Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of technology startup LaunchBit, about some of the experiences she had while fundraising in Silicon Valley. She had to do a double take when one investor questioned whether she might be "a meek Asian woman" who couldn't head a staff of 100. Oh, and she sometimes gets mistaken for the catering staff at Valley events. In part two of the show we hear from Janne Sigurdsson of Alcoa in Iceland (below) and Kathy Waller and Charlotte Oades of Coca-Cola. Both companies have recently received awards for their progress in advancing women up the ranks.

The Broad Experience 16: Leaning in

April 16, 2013

The latest episode of The Broad Experience takes six women and more than six glasses of wine, and combines them in a debate on Sheryl Sandberg's bestselling book Lean In. It was an illuminating evening featuring many different views. For show notes and more about my guests, visit this show's episode page at TheBroadExperience.com.

My column in Metro on women and negotiating

April 2, 2013

Read here. Appears in Metro. I was recently given the opportunity to have a monthly career column in Metro, the commuter newspaper for Boston, New York and Philadelphia. It's very short, but, I hope, useful. I am a passionate advocate for women as negotiators. Too many of us don't negotiate at all, most of us not enough. I am by no means great at it myself. I dread talking about money. But if you don't ask, you have no idea if you'll get. All they can say is no. Naysayers claim that women are 'punished' if they ask for more, because by asking we're violating social norms for women. It's true that as women we have to be very careful in the *way* we ask. But that does not mean we shouldn't bother. I truly believe this is one of the reasons for the pay gap. How can it not be? Men start negotiating in greater numbers than women right at the college level. It makes a difference. Do it.