Boston Radio: Susan Goldberg Named President/CEO At GBH

Susan Goldberg, a media executive and leader of technological and cultural transformation, will be the next President and CEO of GBH. She is the first woman to hold this role since GBH was founded in 1951.

From 2014 to 2022, Goldberg was editor-in-chief at National Geographic, taking on the additional role of editorial director in 2015. At National Geographic – where she was the first woman in the top editorial role – she and her team reinvented the newsroom and its editorial strategy, helping take the venerable publication from reverence to relevance by diversifying its staff, expanding its coverage, and executing a multi-platform transformation that has made National Geographic one of the strongest educational brands across social and digital platforms while continuing its legacy publications.

Goldberg most recently served as a Vice Dean and professor of practice at Arizona State University, with a joint appointment to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the College of Global Futures.

Susan Goldberg

“Susan is a committed advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, both in terms of the work and those doing the work, and is a strong believer in the power of storytelling in education. Journalism and education are the keys to our future,” said Lee Pelton, president and CEO of The Boston Foundation, member of the GBH Board of Trustees, and search committee member. “She’s charismatic and energetic and is committed to being a community leader.”

Goldberg has been honored repeatedly for her leadership, including becoming the “leadership honoree” for her work in uplifting women by the International Women’s Media Foundation in 2020. She was named to the Top Women in Media list by Folio in 2020, was No. 7 on the “Badass50” list by InStyle magazine in 2020, was on Washington’s “most powerful” women list in Washingtonian Magazine in 2017, 2019 and 2021, and was honored with the “Exceptional Woman in Publishing” Award in 2015. 

She is a six-time juror for the esteemed Pulitzer Prize, a board member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and President of the Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Goldberg began her career as a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She has been the “first woman” in a number of roles, including her work in the Washington, D.C. Bureau for Bloomberg News, where she was an executive editor; as editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer; and as managing editor and executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News. She also worked as deputy managing editor at USA Today; and as a reporter and editor at the Detroit Free Press. She has a B.A. in journalism from Michigan State University.