NPR board elects Milena Alberti-Perez and Margaret Low to the NPR board of directors

NPR welcomes the election of Milena Alberti-Perez and Margaret Low to the NPR board of directors.

Milena Alberti-Perez was elected by the board by unanimous written consent on April 17 to serve as an NPR Public Director for a term expiring in November 2025. She was seated on May 3.

Margaret Low, CEO of WBUR Boston, was elected by the board at its last quarterly meeting on April 12 to serve as a Member Director for a term expiring in November 2025. She was also seated on May 3.

"It's a privilege to be on the NPR Board," said Low. "I've devoted my entire professional life to journalism in the public interest. This work has never been for the faint of heart. Now it's even harder. We must see around corners, find new ways to connect with audiences and make ends meet. I hope I can make a difference for NPR and Member Stations at this critical juncture — so that we can all thrive for decades to come."

NPR's 23-member Board of Directors is comprised of 12 Member Directors who are managers of NPR Member stations and are elected to the board by their fellow Member stations, nine Public Directors who are prominent members of the public selected by the board and confirmed by NPR Member stations, the NPR Foundation chair, and the NPR president and CEO.

Milena Alberti-Perez

Biography: Milena Alberti-Perez

Milena Alberti-Perez is a seasoned financial, media and technology executive with over 20 years of experience in book publishing and digital companies. She has led and mentored teams of more than 200 people across the full spectrum of financial analysis and reporting, including the largest merger in book publishing history, and the integration of those companies.

Alberti-Perez spent most of her career at Penguin Random House and currently serves on two non-profit boards and three corporate boards. Alberti-Perez was most recently the chief financial officer of Getty Images, Inc. (NYSE: GETY), the world's leading visual content company, where she participated in over 60 investor presentations to take the company public. Prior to that, she served as the chief financial officer of MediaMath, a demand-side platform for programmatic marketing and advertising. She worked in a variety of financial and publishing roles from 2001 to 2017 at Penguin Random House, the world's largest book publisher, serving as the global and U.S. chief financial officer of Penguin Random House from 2015 to 2017, as the head of Corporate Development/M&A from 2010 to 2015, and as director of Spanish Language Publishing from 2004 to 2010. As management, she served as a non-voting member of its board of directors and its audit committee. Alberti-Perez also worked in financial analyst and research roles at Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley.

Alberti-Perez has extensive experience in corporate and non-profit boards. She is an independent director at Digimarc Corporation (Nasdaq: DMRC), where she serves as the chair of its Audit Committee and is a member of its Compensation Committee. She serves on two private company boards in audiobook publishing and digital library distribution, RBmedia and Overdrive, both owned by KKR. She also sits on two non-profit boards, Jumpstart and the Wild Bird Fund. Alberti-Perez has served on the boards of Companhia das Letras, and Flatworld/Sagence, and has served on not-for-profit boards of directors, including The University of Pennsylvania Executive Fund, and THE CITY. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude from The University of Pennsylvania, with Distinction in Economics and minors in Math and Latin American Studies. She received her Masters degree in Business Administration, with Distinction, from the Harvard Business School, where she graduated in the top 15% of her class. Born in Peru and a native Spanish speaker, Alberti-Perez currently lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Margaret Low

Biography: Margaret Low

Margaret Low is the chief executive officer of WBUR in Boston. 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.

About NPR:

NPR's rigorous reporting and unsurpassed storytelling connects with millions of Americans every day — on the air, online and in-person. NPR strives to create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures. With a nationwide network of award-winning journalists and 17 international bureaus, NPR and its Member stations are never far from where a story is unfolding. Listeners can find NPR by tuning in to their local Member stations (npr.org/stations), and now it's easy to listen to our stories on smart speaker devices. Ask your smart speaker to, "Play NPR," and you'll be tuned into your local Member station's live stream. Your speaker can also access NPR podcasts, NPR One, NPR News Now, and the Visual Newscast is available for screened speakers. Get more information at npr.org/about and by following NPR Extra on Facebook and Instagram.

About the NPR Board of Directors:

The NPR Board of Directors is responsible for the governance of our 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. The board sets the policies and overall direction for NPR management, monitors the performance of NPR and provides financial oversight.