Over the course of my life, I’ve crossed paths with a variety of amazing people and one of those is journalist Ellen McGirt. She is an award-winning business journalist specializing in long form profiles. Currently, she writes a daily column covering race, culture, and leadership for Fortune called raceAhead. Every day when it arrives in my inbox, I stop whatever I’m doing and immediately read it. During her time at Fast Company, she wrote a number of high profile cover stories about a variety of people including President Obama, Matt Damon, and Mark Zuckerberg. We discuss all of this, the important role teachers played in her life, and the cross-country storytelling trip she took in the months following September 11th. Sit down with us on Ellen McGirt’s back porch on a beautiful spring day  and find out why she writes.