PMI Announces Inaugural CEO
The following message is being sent on behalf of Public Media Infrastructure (PMI).
Dear Colleagues,
I'm delighted to share an important milestone for Public Media Infrastructure (PMI): following a rigorous and competitive search, we've named Jeannie Ericson as our inaugural CEO.
Funded through one of the final grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PMI was created to forge the next chapter of infrastructure and innovation for public media. Since our founding late last year, we’ve been meeting with stations and laying the groundwork to develop best-in-class tools, technology, and shared services to ensure local stations can thrive in a post-CPB era.
We’re confident Jeannie is the right leader to help us steward this critical investment and build the shared infrastructure stations need to serve current and future audiences.
Many of you already know Jeannie as an early leader in shaping how public media can harness technology to advance our public service mission. She joins us from Public Media Venture Group, where she served as a strategy consultant. Earlier, she transformed the Integrated Media Association (IMA) – public radio’s first-ever organization dedicated to helping public media adapt and thrive in a rapidly shifting digital environment – into a vital, sustainable organization resulting in a 400% increase in IMA membership, a remarkable achievement that led to its acquisition by PMDMC (now Greater Public). Prior to that, she led digital strategy initiatives at WABE in Atlanta. She also brings rich experience from beyond our industry, including digital leadership roles at McKinsey & Company, Candid Partners, The Coca-Cola Company, and IBM.
Beyond her resume, Jeannie brings the values and commitment this role demands. She’s aligned with PMI’s station-centered mandate, and believes deeply that public media’s greatest strength lies in its 1,300+ local stations across every kind of community. She’s deeply collaborative and experienced in uniting diverse stakeholders around ambitious goals. And her digital expertise is matched only by her enthusiasm for making sure public media evolves and grows for years to come.
In her work at PMI, Jeannie will set organizational strategy, develop and lead a team, and most importantly, partner closely with all of you to shape a collaborative infrastructure model that enables public media organizations of every size to innovate, operate more efficiently, and continue serving your communities when they need you most.
Jeannie starts Monday, August 3, and will begin reaching out to stations in the coming weeks. We'll also share more about PMI's priorities and opportunities for engagement later this summer.
I want to thank my fellow PMI Board member Jean Taylor, President and CEO of American Public Media (one of the co-founders of PMI), for chairing the CEO Search Committee. We owe a debt of gratitude to Ashley Alvarado, President and CEO of Texas Public Radio; Shane Miner, Chief Operating Officer, WGBH; and Roycie Eppler, Chief People and Culture Officer, APMG, for joining us in this effort as well. Their participation ensured that station perspectives were at the forefront through every step of this process.
I also want to thank Bob Kempf for his work as Interim Executive Director of PMI these last nine months. He did the hard work of establishing our workflows, connecting with stations, and getting PMI off the ground and out into the world. Some of the initiatives we’ll be announcing to you later this year were first started by Bob, and we’re grateful he’s agreed to stay on to help Jeannie transition into her new role.
We created PMI because no single station can solve every challenge facing public media alone. By working together, we believe we can build stronger shared infrastructure while preserving the local service that makes public media unique. We’re excited to start this next chapter with you.
LaFontaine E. Oliver
Chair, PMI Board of Directors
Executive Chair, New York Public Radio
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Dear Colleagues,
I am incredibly excited to become PMI’s inaugural CEO at this pivotal moment for public media.
Like so many of you, I got my start in public media at a local station, and even during the periods of my career when I worked in other industries, I always felt a pull to rejoin this community – one that is national in scope, but locally rooted.
So I’d like to first thank LaFontaine and the PMI Board for the warm welcome and for entrusting me with PMI’s mission to build something new to support the local stations who bring the promise of public media to life.
I return to this industry deeply heartened to see a renewed understanding of the real value of local media. If there's a silver lining to the challenges public media has faced over the past year, it's that more people now recognize the essential role local stations play in their communities. That value has never been in question for those of you doing the work every day. Now the country is catching up to what you've always known: local media is among the most trusted sources of news and information, and public media stations continue to play an indispensable role in building community, bridging divides, and making original cultural and music programming available to all.
That recognition comes at an urgent moment. PMI’s stated business is technology services for stations, and our mission is to provide digital leadership that can scale shared solutions on a system-wide level so no station has to go it alone. But I believe our responsibility is larger than that. I see our role as helping to advance a local-first, interdependent vision for this industry — strengthening the community of stations while delivering exceptional, affordable technology and support to every one of you. I envision an organization that helps sort through the drumbeat of new technology announcements and relieves individual stations of having to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape alone. One of the necessary pieces for a stronger future is an entity that provides not just infrastructure, but guidance, a testing ground, and a genuine community for the people doing locally focused digital innovation. That's the role I hope PMI can fill.
There are many possible paths for this work, and I intend for stations to have a major role in shaping that roadmap through our Advisory Committee and an actively engaged station community. Together, we’ll bring this vision to fruition.
My own career has moved across industries, across commercial and nonprofit organizations, and across hierarchical and federated structures, from the smallest firms to the largest global companies. I hope that breadth helps bring some new and different thinking to how we solve problems together.
One more thing worth saying plainly: my background may look technology-heavy on paper. But the work I care most about is advancing people — helping teams and organizations find new, better ways to work together. New infrastructure, automation, data, AI, and shared tools will mean very little without a strong team building them and a community of stations ready to embrace what's possible. Building that trust, together, is the real work ahead.
Over this past year, I watched CPB's loss ripple through this system — I heard directly from stations about what was lost, and what it took to keep serving their communities anyway. That experience sharpened my sense of what this moment demands, and it's part of why I couldn't imagine a more important time to take on this role. I'm honored to help build what comes next, alongside all of you.
I’m eager to get started and can’t wait to connect with many of you in the weeks and months ahead.
With gratitude,
Jeannie Ericson
Incoming Chief Executive Officer
Public Media Infrastructure