Kristin Espeland is a reporter for Louisville’s NPR news affiliate, 89.3 FM, WFPL. She covers environmental and other beats in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Ohio River Valley region. Previously, she was a reporter and host at Wyoming Public Radio. There, she helped design and launch the award winning news magazine, Open Spaces. She began her career in corporate communications, in both San Francisco and New York City.

Since becoming a journalist, Espeland has won several awards from the Wyoming and Kentucky press associations, as well as Public Radio News Directors Inc., and the Louisville chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Espeland is originally from Chicago, Illinois. She loves producing stories that get her into the thick of things, and she’s willing to wear protective clothing or travel by unusual means to do it. So far she has donned a hard hat and safety goggles to climb an oil rig; worn waders up a river in search of endangered mussels; and scrambled up a ladder on a hydroelectric station with a microphone in her teeth.