D-C Radio: Erika Pulley-Hayes Named New GM At WAMU

WAMU has hired Erika Pulley-Hayes to lead the station as its new general manager. Pulley-Hayes, president and CEO of Community Communications, Inc., an NPR affiliate in Orlando, Florida, will start her new role August 30, according to a posting at the WAMU website.

Pulley-Hayes told DCist in an interview Monday that she is most excited about joining the “spirit and energy” of Washington.

“Washington, D.C., is really a public radio station’s dream market,” she says. “D.C. is the seventh media market in the country. That’s a big deal. So I just think there are so many positives about this opportunity about this city, at this university, with this station. If you’re going to be in public media, this is where you want to be.”

Erika Pulley-Hayes

Pulley-Hayes, 49, has worked in public media since 2005 and, since January 2020, has managed two public radio stations in Central Florida — WMFE in Orlando and WMFV in The Villages. Before that role, she served as vice president of radio for the D.C.-based nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports more than 1,500 publicly-owned media organizations across the U.S. — including WAMU — with taxpayer funds. Before her time at CPB, Pulley-Hayes managed legal operations at a small clinical research organization in Northern Virginia. In September 2020, Pulley-Hayes was elected to the NPR Board of Directors.

Pulley-Hayes succeeds JJ Yore, who stepped down last August after six years at WAMU. His departure came amid a public reckoning for the station, stemming from a DCist investigation that uncovered allegations of sexual harassment against a former reporter and tweets by former and current employees who said the station had a history of mistreating staffers of color.

In a statement, a WAMU spokesperson said that as general manager, Pulley-Hayes will “oversee all aspects of WAMU’s operations and a staff of more than 100, and she will serve as WAMU’s ambassador to the Washington, D.C.region and the public media system.”

The station considered more than 130 candidates for the role, according to Seth Grossman, a VP at American University and chief of staff to the president, who led the station’s search committee. Grossman has also served as interim GM of WAMU since Yore’s departure.