Margaret Low
Chief Executive Officer, WBUR
Margaret Low is the chief executive officer of WBUR in Boston and a member of the NPR Board of Directors. WBUR is an award-winning producer of high-quality journalism on-air, online, on demand and on stage at CitySpace. WBUR has one of the strongest local newsrooms in the country, with dozens of journalists covering the most pressing issues in the city and the region. WBUR reaches seven million listeners across the country each week with its two national programs, Here & Now — a midday newsmagazine produced with NPR – and On Point. WBUR is also a pioneering podcaster, with critically acclaimed shows like Endless Thread, Circle Round, Violation, Anything for Selena, Last Seen, Modern Love and The Common.
Before joining WBUR in January 2020, Low was president of AtlanticLIVE, The Atlantic's events division, which during her tenure produced more than 100 conferences a year across the country. Low joined The Atlantic in the fall of 2014 and in a short time transformed the events business into a live journalism juggernaut that set the standard for the news industry.
Prior to The Atlantic, Low enjoyed a storied career at NPR, spanning decades. She first walked through the doors as an overnight production assistant on Morning Edition and rose through the ranks to become senior vice president for news — NPR's top editorial job. In that role, she oversaw the work of some 400 journalists worldwide and coverage of major news events from The Arab Spring and wars in Syria and Libya to the reelection of Barack Obama and the Boston Marathon bombing. She opened new foreign bureaus, launched new shows, developed new beats and led the digital transformation of the newsroom, steering the audio strategy for digital platforms and quickening the response to breaking news.
Earlier at NPR, Low was vice president for programming with responsibility for all non-news shows, injecting a high degree of editorial sophistication into program development and acquisitions. Among Low's most notable accomplishments was the reinvention of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! transforming a studio-based radio quiz show into a live, award-winning road show and business success story.
During her tenure, NPR earned some of the most prestigious honors in journalism, including multiple Peabody Awards, duPont-Columbia Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Low serves on the board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. She is vice chair of the board of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a board member of Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan, home to the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowships. In 2017, she was the commencement speaker for the School of Communications at her alma mater, the University of Michigan, where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in English Language and Literature. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
