The Power of Podcasting for the Global Community
A-B Tech student and Argentine journalist Patricia Serrano will be presenting “Our Stories Matter: The Power of Podcasting for the Global Community” at A-B Tech at 12:30 p.m. April 14 in Ferguson Auditorium on the Asheville campus. This free session will be an intercultural story hour where they will discuss the most human form of communication: telling a story.
Patricia Serrano is an Argentine journalist, audio producer, and podcaster based in Asheville. Her work focuses on la comunidad latina in North Carolina and the complex underlying stories and relationships connecting us throughout the Americas.
She came to Asheville for love in 2020 from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her husband is David Miller, a local filmmaker and journalist, who will be co presenting Our Stories Matter with Patricia.
“We had a long-distance relationship for three years. We only saw each other two times a year. It was hard but we knew that if we wanted to be together we needed to do something,” she said. So, they decided to do something. Serrano moved to Asheville just before the beginning of the pandemic and they got married in 2021.
“I love living here. I love the mountains,” she said. “But I came to Asheville without really speaking English and the first year was really hard”. She attends the ELA classes at A-B Tech to improve her English and now she is in Academic Track level.
Becoming fluent in English is helping her journalism, which she has pursued her whole life. When she was 17, she went to the National University of La Plata in Argentina to fulfill her dream. “I always wanted to be a journalist, I always wanted to write,” she said.
“The thing I love the most about being a journalist is telling stories about people…and maybe changing the perception others have about people. Everyone has an interesting life and an interesting story,” Serrano said.
In the past two years, she and Miller have also done stories for Radio Ambulante and Blue Ridge Public Radio. “I’ve only lived here a short while, and my voice is on public radio,” she said. “That is amazing for me.”
Serrano and Miller co-produce Enlace Latino Podcast, the first informative podcast in Spanish in North Carolina. This April is the launch of the 4ths season. New episodes drop the third Saturday each month at www.enlacelatinonc.org/podcast.
They are also working together to launch a nonprofit called Recording Las Américas which supports bilingual audio storytelling for local communities in Western North Carolina. “There are strong communities of all the different people that live here. Our goal is to help people tell their own story in their own voices.”
Serrano and Miller’s presentation “Our Stories Matter: The Power of Podcasting for the Global Community” is sponsored by Global Education at A-B Tech.