Assistant Program Director, Executive Producer Of Special Projects

Those listeners familiar with the station’s “Inside Out” documentaries are hearing the fruits of labor of Anna Bensted, WBUR’s Assistant Program Director and Executive Producer of Special Projects.

Anna joined WBUR in 1999, serving first as Managing Editor for daily news before shifting to the production and editing for national distribution of “Inside Out,” WBUR’s current affairs documentary series. During her five years in this role, “Inside Out” has won a number of national awards, including the duPont Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, the Robert Kennedy Journalism Award for Radio and, in 2004, the Overseas Press Club Award for Radio.

Prior to working at WBUR, Anna garnered well over a decade of experience in public radio in the United Kingdom. She worked as host and producer of a daily news magazine program at BBC Radio Sussex for five years before becoming producer at BBC Radio Scotland in Edinburgh of “The Usual Suspects,” a daily arts and culture program, and the “BBC Edinburgh Festival Shows.” Anna also served her time up and down the long corridors of both Broadcasting and Bush House in London. In 1995, Anna relocated to the United States. Settling in Boston, she continued her work for BBC Radio as a producer and interviewer, developing and producing three six-part series. One of these, “Kane over America,” explored American culture and society in the early 90’s, with a Scottish journalist taking the BBC listener from the offices of Wired Magazine to the farmhouses of Oklahoma to the shooting galleries of New York. “Kane over America” was honored with the United Kingdom’s most prestigious broadcast award, the Sony Radio Award.

Anna still lives along the Charles River with her husband, a professor of Italian literature, and their two grown sons.