Michael Hemphill

My least favorite job interview question: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

As a peripatetic professional who claims at least 10 different jobs in my 32 years of post-college work, I am contemplating this question as I wrap up year 5 of Buzz4Good.

It was the start of the pandemic when we started rolling cameras in Spring 2020. The world was a fearful and isolating place. We masked and social distanced and sanitized as best we could while still trying to capture the beautiful humanity of those nonprofits – and the marketing pros willing to risk their own health – in those early episodes.

If you’d asked me then where I saw myself in 5 years, I would have replied, “I’ll be lucky to make it 5 months.”

I didn’t have a long-term strategic plan … still don’t. I lived by the mantra first uttered by my friend Bruce C. Bryan: “Head down, keep grinding. Head up, keep looking for opportunity.”

So we kept producing BUZZ episodes as that foundation grant or corporate sponsor came through … and sometimes when it didn’t. In 2021 WFIR offered an hour time slot on Saturday afternoons, so the Buzz4Good! radio show/podcast was born. My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2023 (she’s in remission now), so I took BUZZ on the road to my hometown of Birmingham to highlight Alabama nonprofits while helping my sisters with Mom’s care. Around that time, my wife’s cousin Rob Orthwein, a livestream technical producer, moved to Roanoke, and so early this year our BUZZ Live! talk show began.

Last night we previewed our 78th episode to wrap up 2025. It stars Angels of Assisi and airs Dec. 3 on Blue Ridge PBS. By chance – or fate – it features development director Carol Jessee, who back in 2020 served as executive director of Southwest Virginia Ballet, the star of our very first episode. And it features Wordsprint owner Bill Gilmer, who also donated marketing assets to SVB in Episode 1.

Has BUZZ achieved the exposure and EMMYs I believe it merits? No. Has it gotten easier to raise money to fund this work? Nah. But I have secured $60,000 in grants for production in 2026 in both Virginia and Alabama, and have begun conversations about buzzing in Nashville … stay tuned.

I still have no idea where I see myself in 5 years. But I am looking back on where I was 5 years ago and saying, “Not bad, Michael. Not bad.”