Picture of Margaret Low

Margaret Low

CEO

Margaret Low is the CEO of WBUR in Boston — 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 America, with dozens of journalists covering the most pressing issues in the city and the region. WBUR reaches nearly seven million listeners across the country each week with its two national programs, On Point and Here & Now — a midday newsmagazine produced with NPR. WBUR is also a pioneering podcaster, with critically acclaimed shows like The Gun Machine, Violation, Endless ThreadCircle Round, Anything for Selena, Last Seen, Modern Love and The Common — WBUR’s daily local on demand show.

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 the 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, Margaret was vice president for programming with responsibility for all non-news shows. Among Margaret’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.

Margaret serves on NPR’s Board of Directors. She is 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. The University of Michigan is also her alma mater. In 2017, she was the commencement speaker for U of M’s School of Communications. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband Kinsey Wilson.

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