Rhonda Miller

Veteran journalist Rhonda Miller’s career has taken her across the country to jobs in radio, print, and online news organizations. She’s covered a wide range of topics along the way including countless environmental issues, with an emphasis on human impacts. “I think it’s important to find real people who haven’t really been in the news, and haven’t told their stories,” said Miller. “Those people are very believable and authentic.”

Miller has just begun a new job as a reporter and host of All Things Considered for WKU Public Radio in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she covers everything from the environment and politics to business, military issues, and education.

An alumna of Metcalf Institute’s Peter B. Lord Seminars on the Environment, Miller attended the seminars while reporting for the Providence Business News where she covered energy, the environment, and explored how small businesses approach climate change. Miller said the “timing was right” when she attended her first Metcalf seminar in 2012 on Climate Change Impacts in Southern New England because she had just begun to cover more environmental issues for the newspaper.

“I gained access to the people who are leading the climate change work, the heads of organizations and the heads of agencies,” said Miller of the researchers and policy experts she met at the Metcalf seminars. “I was able to meet them face-to-face and call them. I think that’s very important.”

Before arriving in Providence, Miller was immersed in stories about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill as a reporter for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. As communities struggled to rebuild from the hurricane, Miller focused on the emotional and economic impact of the storm. She also covered stories about the people who became ill following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, as well as the spill’s effects on fishermen.

A graduate of Boston University with a degree in journalism, Miller is now helping to guide new writers with two online classes she’s teaching over the summer for the Creative Nonfiction Foundation in Pittsburgh. As a way of paying it forward, Miller has passed along some of the insights gained from the Peter B. Lord Seminars she attended to several of her students, who have produced podcasts about scientific and environmental topics.