Michael Cogdill is blessed as one of the most honored television storytellers in America. His cache of awards includes 24 Emmys and the National Edward R. Murrow for a broad range of achievement, from live reporting to long-form storytelling. His work proves the power a message can hold when it reaches the human heart. Michael’s television credits as a writer/performer include CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and The Today Show. His interview credits are about as varied as you can get: The Reverend Billy Graham, Dr. Mehmet Oz of Oprah fame, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Abby Hoffman, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John McCain, Howard K. Smith, James Brown, and countless eminent members of Congress along with other key newsmakers around the country. His coverage credits include Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States and major figures in entertainment.

Michael is a sought-after inspirational speaker, whose messages deeply move the most diverse audiences. Much of his speaking draws from the extraordinary heroism of seemingly ordinary people Michael has covered in more than twenty years in television. He inspires with fun and the pathos of deeply personal storytelling, leaving audiences with astounding power to change destructive ways of fear, despair, and even the meanness that makes news. They leave with an utterly new lens on life and the events within it. A world-changing view of themselves, empowered to build human institutions and human lives into soaring stories of success. Michael carries the wisdom shared with him during some of the worst of times to help people rise to their personal greatness. Thanks to the great souls he’s been blessed to know and cover, Michael’s speaking helps people change their times with new and magnetic leadership.
Michael is a writer working across genres that include children’s literature, the Southern novel, and self-improvement non-fiction. His latest competed work, a novel entitled She-Rain, will launch in 2010, with a global publicity blast. Michael is currently at work on two self-improvement pieces of non-fiction: God's Contact Lens (which has the attention of writer Philip Yancey) and Raise The Haze (an e-book in partnership with peak-performance coach and coming Bob Proctor Youth Movement speaker, Chris Dines, in London).

Michael was born in Asheville, North Carolina, June 11, 1961 -- the son of a truck driver and a mill worker. He is extremely proud of his working-people roots, drawing on their deep wisdom and life lessons in his reporting, writing and public speaking. Michael is a cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Asheville with a degree in communications, emphasis on the liberal arts. He married Jill Kremer Cogdill in 1985, and together they've founded a company, Cracker the Crab LLC, publishing children's literature and extending a broad product line with emphasis on raising self-esteem in the young. Michael currently anchors the 6:00 and 11:00 news weeknights on WYFF News 4, NBC in the West Carolinas and Georgia.