By Mary Gottschalk

In the summer of 2008 Alison van Diggelen found herself needing a change.

The Scottish-born van Diggelen was then well known for her siliconmom website, which she started in 2000 when her son was 5 and daughter was 3. Her insightful and witty essays soon led to writing assignments from Bay Area Parent, the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley Business Journal and other local publications, establishing her credentials as a journalist.

Then two years ago, she says, “I was changing definitions of what I was. I was Silicon Valley Mom, but I was changing hats. I had made a decision that after a point, the kids’ lives are their own, and I felt it wasn’t right to be writing about their exploits. My kids are growing up, and it was time to focus on something where I felt I could make a small difference.”

Now the Almaden resident is on track to launch a television show on CreaTV Comcast Cable this fall.

Her first step was a 2008 summer internship at KQED radio with the Forum team.

“I had a wonderful time; it’s such a great program and I was involved with pre-interviews with Michael Krasny’s guests,” van Diggelen says.

“It was so exciting, I said, ‘I want to do my own version of this.’

“I had lunch with Michael at the end of the internship, and he wished me well and said, ‘You can do it, but it’s hard to get a slot on radio.’ ”

So she decided she could do it online.

In September 2008, at the end of her internship, van Diggelen launched Fresh Dialogues with the help of web designer Carol Pecora.

A website with podcasts, the title Fresh Dialogues is van Diggelen’s tribute to Terry Gross’ Fresh Air on National Public Radio.

Along with Krasny’s encouragement, van Diggelen sought advice from Moira Gunn of Tech Nation, which also airs on NPR.

“Moira was very helpful. She advised me to find a niche and mine that niche because with one person you can’t do All Things Considered,” van Diggelen says.

“The advice from her was to ask myself what do I feel passionately about and do that.” She felt passionate about the environment and global warming.

“I can’t change the world, but I can profile people who are finding greener solutions to making energy or driving cars more efficiently, and they can help us all live with a lower carbon footprint.”

Original websites and podcasts are common fare in Silicon Valley, but what sets van Diggelen apart is her uncanny ability to coax major names to agree to interviews.

Martin Sheen, Thomas Friedman, Charlie Rose, Jack Welch and Maureen Dowd, as well as a number of major Silicon Valley figures, have all sat down to chat with van Diggelen.

“I’m very fortunate,” she says. “I’m good friends with Dick Henning, who is the founder of the Foothill Celebrity Forum, and when he has someone like Maureen Dowd, I get a chance to meet them.”

While there are no guarantees of an interview, van Diggelen says, “Even if it’s a slim chance, I think it’s so important to have done your homework and know about them. I do prepare my questions beforehand, but I like to have more of a conversation. You can get more from someone if you go with the flow.”

Aware that celebrities have been interviewed endlessly, she says, “I try to come on in a different way so it’s not a canned answer, so I’m getting something fresh.”

While Fresh Dialogues is a place “where we focus on green business issues,” van Diggelen acknowledges that some podcasts are more green-focused than others.

In interviews with Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures on clean tech or Stuart Evens of Novacem on carbon negative cement manufacturing, the green aspect is front and center.

With celebrities, it’s sometimes “not as pure green,” she says.

In her 90-minute interview with Dowd, van Diggelen says they covered a variety of topics from column writing to politics to how Dowd recycles.

Even though Dowd’s comments on recycling are limited to how she does it herself, van Diggelen says because she “has a huge following, just to hear her talk about recycling is a treat for them.”

Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO, was somewhat of a surprise, she says.

“He’s very opinionated and he said to me, ‘I don’t believe in global warming, but even if you don’t believe in it, you have to make your company as green as possible because consumers demand it.’

“He’s such a businessman, and if you’re looking at the bottom line, you have to cater to what the consumer demands,” she says.

Martin Sheen was van Diggelen’s “first big celebrity” and someone she felt so comfortable with that she says, “I could have chatted with him all night. There were no airs for someone of his caliber and celebrity.”

Sheen told van Diggelen she was “very brave,” and she’s frequently asked if she’s ever nervous.

“I’m not in awe of anybody. I’m very respectful, but if you put people on a pedestal and talk up to them, it’s not as good a dialogue,” she says.

Now 43, van Diggelen was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, a place she says is best known for being where television was invented.

She met her husband, Frank van Diggelen, who was from South Africa, when both were students at Cambridge University in England. She earned a master’s in land economics and he earned a Ph.D. and is now an engineer at Broadcom in Sunnyvale.

After they married, she says they asked, “‘Where are we going to live?’ He didn’t want to live in Scotland because of the rain, and I didn’t want to live in South Africa. We decided to check out the United States and thought we’d come for two years, and we’ve been here 18 years now.”

She adds: “We love the way of life here and we love the weather, and we love how cosmopolitan it is.”

Initially the two lived in Colorado, but they moved to the Almaden area 15 years ago when van Diggelen was pregnant with their first child.

“We try to get back to Scotland once every year or every other year ,and this year we’re actually going to both Scotland and then South Africa,” she says.

Van Diggelen does most of her work between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., when her children are in school.

Now she’s gearing up for the launch of her television show in the fall.

She’s already done two pilot episodes, one with Carl Guardino, CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and the other with Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies.

Van Diggelen says she’s been approaching television as she would a startup.

“Now we’re in the stage of making it sustainable and we’re looking for a company to sponsor Fresh Dialogues,” she says.

Sponsorship will determine whether the series starts off as monthly or weekly, but either way van Diggelen is excited.

She’s also planning to continue with her podcasts and videos, posting a new one each week.

Van Diggelen is also still involved with KQED, serving on the station’s South Bay Advisory Committee and recording commentary for its two-minute Perspectives programming.

For more information, visit www.freshdialogues.com.