Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Borjon.
Ashley, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been documenting South Korean popular music for more than 13 years. That work has taken many forms: journalism, publishing, podcasting, speaking, music history, and cultural commentary—and has grown alongside K-pop’s transformation from a relatively niche interest, in terms of U.S. media, into a globally-respected industry. Over the years, my work expanded well beyond music. I built a career across education, technology, communications, and learning design while continuing to write, create, and contribute to K-content.
What’s certainly different about where I am today is that I’m no longer trying to decide which part of my experience gets to define me. For a long time, I approached my career as though my different areas of expertise needed to be separated to make professional sense. Now, I appreciate how they inform one another.
Journalism made me a better researcher and interviewer. Education strengthened how I communicate information and think about audiences. Technology changed how I approach systems, content, and accessibility. And more than a decade of studying and documenting Korean popular music has given me a historical perspective that has become increasingly valuable as the industry has grown. That shift has changed how I approach my work.
I’m continuing my work as a journalist, writer, speaker, and creator while making more room for K-content, music history, and cultural commentary to be visible within my professional life again. I spent a lot of years thinking that building a multifaceted career meant eventually choosing which version of myself would win. At this point in my career, I’m much more interested in seeing what happens when I stop asking the different parts of my experience to compete.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely has not been a smooth road!
One of the biggest challenges has been building a career across industries that can change very quickly. I’ve experienced layoffs, burnout, shifting media landscapes, business closures, projects ending, and periods when the career path I thought I was building simply stopped looking the way I expected it to. There has also been the challenge of having a multidisciplinary career. Being able to work across several industries has opened a lot of doors, but it can also be difficult in professional environments that expect a simple answer to, “What do you do?”
For a long time, I thought the solution was to minimize certain parts of my experience so the others would make more sense. I don’t believe that anymore. Some of the work I’m proudest of exists because I’ve spent years moving between those spaces. I’ve become much more intentional about defining success for myself instead of measuring my career by whether it follows a conventional path.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a journalist, writer, speaker, and learning experience designer with a professional background that spans media, education, communications, and technology. Within media, I specialize in South Korean popular music and have spent more than a decade writing about K-pop, interviewing artists and industry professionals, and providing historical and cultural context around the music and the industry.
I’m probably best known for my K-content work focused heavily on 2nd and 3rd generation entertainers, and for approaching K-pop from a historical and anecdotal perspective. I’m interested in more than what is happening at the moment. I like understanding how we got there, what came before it, and what may be missing from the larger conversation. That approach carries into my journalism, commentary, podcasting, consulting, and speaking.
Outside of media, my work in education and learning design focuses heavily on the people receiving the information. I’m interested in digital readiness, learner agency, accessibility, and designing experiences that don’t assume access to technology automatically means someone knows how to use it effectively. Across both areas of my work, I tend to ask similar questions: Who is this for? What context do they need? What are we assuming they already know?
I’m most proud of the body of work I’ve built and the fact that I can look back at it and still recognize myself in it. My perspective has matured, my skills have expanded, and there are certainly things I would approach differently today, but the curiosity and care behind the work have remained consistent.
What sets me apart is the range of experience I can bring to a subject without losing sight of the subject itself. I can approach something as a journalist, educator, researcher, communicator, or longtime observer and know when each perspective is useful. I don’t think being multidisciplinary means having to bring everything you know into everything you do. Sometimes the value is simply knowing which part of your experience the work needs!
How do you think about happiness?
Music makes me happy. Listening to it, studying it, talking about it, discovering something new in a song I’ve heard a hundred times—it has been one of the most consistent sources of joy throughout my life.
I’m also happiest when I’m learning without feeling like the learning has to produce something. I love discovering new places, traveling, sharing a good bottle of wine, going down a research rabbit hole, having a great conversation, or finding something interesting enough that I immediately want to tell my husband and others about. There is so much in the world I haven’t heard, tasted, visited, read, or understood yet and I really like knowing that.
There’s always something to discover. Always.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.a3daypodcast.com
