Before Ailsa Chang took the stage of NPR’s All Things Considered show, she was a student at Mountain View High School. Throughout her childhood and academic career, Chang wanted to pursue her long-chased dream of law. However, well into her career, she said she determined law wasn’t for her at all, springing her into a journey of rediscovery that brought her to the present.

During her time at Mountain View High, Chang was a member of the speech and debate club. She attributed her participation to her mother’s desire for her to learn to speak for herself. Chang said her shy nature was altered by her late Speech and Debate coach Richard Haas — better known to Chang as Ric.

“He [Haas] was one of the first people at that point in my life who told me that I was worthwhile to listen to when I spoke publicly,” Chang said. “It has everything to do with why I speak for a living today.”

Even now, well beyond her high school days, as Chang is hosting the radio, she is constantly reminded of the tips and lessons Haas taught her. According to Chang, her knack for varying tone to fit the conversation and carefully choosing her words is thanks to Haas’s instruction and coaching.

When Chang wrote for Mountain View High’s newspaper, she was set on becoming a lawyer, a career she said she had envisioned for herself since childhood. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1998, Chang went on to acquire her Juris Doctor at Stanford Law School and complete a clerkship on the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco for John T. Noonan Jr., both of which were enjoyable experiences that prompted Chang’s employment at a law firm.

Around five years later, Chang quit her job at the firm. There was no specific instance that prompted this decision — Chang said she simply had the revelation that working in law was dissatisfying for her.

“The job didn’t tap into the parts of me that I like best,” Chang said. “I’m someone who likes to follow my curiosity freely … [and] connect with people from all walks of life.”

After spending most of her life anchored in law, Chang was unsure of what she wanted to pursue. For what it seemed like the first time in her life, Chang said, she was planless.

“I had for so long envisioned myself as a lawyer, so the thought of doing anything else was mind-boggling,” Chang said. “Throwing all those plans out the window was so frightening to me. After several months of not having a job … in San Francisco, [I felt] depressed and directionless.”

As an effort to escape this period of idleness, Chang decided to start small, signing up for community service or a vocational program. On the regular, Chang said she was a casual listener of the National Public Radio, finding the hosts of their media programs down-to-earth, educated and fun. With the intention to simply surround herself with this group of people, Chang began an unpaid internship at KQED, the NPR member station in San Francisco.

Over the course of two internships, Chang was a booker who pre-interviewed guests and compiled research for the host. There, she said she enjoyed the relative freedom — with the broadness of topics covered — that journalism provided as opposed to the restrictiveness of law.

“If you’re a litigator, … you could remain on a case for years and years,” Chang said. “But, when you’re a journalist, one of the most exciting … [and] liberating things is that you can jump from story to story.”

Reflecting on this experience helped Chang recognize her fondness towards journalism. Unlike law, she said her work in the field led her to discover that journalism would exercise the traits she had hoped to develop, including becoming a better listener, showing more empathy, being open to opposing viewpoints and holding curiosity, she said.

Simultaneously, as she spent her time at KQED, Chang explored freelance work as a booker for online shows, where she furthered her dedication to pursuing journalism.

“One of the blessings of this [journalism] job that I discovered early on is you can learn about something that you never, ever even thought to begin learning about,” Chang said.

A remote show about palliative care, which Chang invited her parents to, was particularly meaningful. Initially, Chang said, her Taiwanese parents — who had immigrated and put in significant efforts to support her education — were upset that Chang had cast aside her legal job for journalism, a decision they believed was accompanied by instability, financial insecurity and a late start to her new career given that she was in her 30s.. This opportunity, which exposed Chang’s parents to her journalistic work after gravitating away from law, helped debunk any doubts they had about her career change.

While Chang’s time at KQED was an unplanned occurrence, she was inspired by her mentors and academic mindset to apply to Columbia University’s one-year masters in journalism program.

After journalism school, she started as a public radio reporter at WNYC, an NPR member station in New York focusing on criminal justice issues and the New York Police Department. Here, she said she harnessed her fluency with the legal system to add to her reporting and aid her peers in releasing intelligible media. Later, she continued her work at NPR headquarters with a focus on Congress and at Planet Money, an NPR podcast that discusses global news with an economic spin.

By then, Chang said she had begun to observe the overlaps between journalism and law, such as the goal of providing a voice for those who don’t have the means to speak loudly for themselves.

“[For] both professions, it’s important to tell a story after amassing an enormous amount of facts,” Chang said. “[Then], you distill those facts into a narrative. Also, it’s important to meet deadlines, to be comfortable with contentious people, to spot logical inconsistencies … [and] to anticipate counter arguments to what you write.”

Chang’s tenure as a host truly began once she was invited to serve as guest host for several NPR shows, including Morning Edition, Weekend Edition and All Things Considered. She currently serves as a regular host for All Things Considered, enjoying the chance to meet individuals involved in literature, movies, science, government and law. While on air, Chang said she has found skillfully guiding the conversation to be a fun challenge, as the entirety of the dialogue is published.

“You develop a much more personal rapport on air with people you’re interviewing,” Chang said. “What people listen to is a back-and-forth conversation, so what you say and the tone you use is just as important as what the guest says.”

As a Bay Area-native and Mountain View High alumnus, Chang wanted to emphasize the importance of staying open-minded and letting yourself explore. Rather than drafting a roadmap for every step of the way — like she had — Chang said that individuals will figure out what they want to pursue along the way, instead of at the outset.

“You can lay out the most intricate plans, but if you don’t give yourself the opportunity to get to know who you are, what you feel passionate about, what brings you meaning and joy, then you should be ready to upend those plans,” Chang said. “I am here to tell you that the best laid plans are plans that you can throw away.”