Comings and goings: Software exec Jo Lambert elected chair of NPR board, SVP leaves CPB …

Jo Lambert, COO of software company Olo, was elected chair of the NPR board, succeeding Jennifer Ferro, president of KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif.

Shawn Turner, GM of WKAR Public Media, was elected to serve as vice chair. He succeeds Lambert, an NPR public director since 2022. Turner joined the board in 2024.

“I am honored to step into the role of Board Chair at this consequential moment for NPR and the public media system,” Lambert said in a news release. “The past year has clearly demonstrated our incredible resilience and the profound, mission-critical strength of our 50-state Network. With strong momentum behind us—reflected in growing audience and donor support—I look forward to working with NPR’s leadership and the entire Network to chart our course ahead.”

Prior to her current role at Olo, which provides software for restaurants, Lambert held executive positions with American Express, PayPal and Yahoo.

Turner, a former deputy White House press secretary for national security during the Obama administration, has led Michigan State University’s dual licensee stations in East Lansing since 2022. After leaving government service, Turner taught communications at MSU before his appointment to GM of WKAR. His public service career includes serving in the U.S. Marine Corps for 21 years and communications roles for the National Security Council and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Deborah Carr, SVP of operations and strategy for CPB, is leaving the corporation.

“As part of our wind down, our remaining colleagues will continue to depart over the next few months,” a CPB spokesperson said in an email to Current. “Deborah has completed her work and we’re very grateful for her long tenure at CPB.”

Carr joined CPB’s HR department in 1996 and later became director of radio Community Service Grant policy and administration. She has also worked as VP of media strategy operations, director of business and administration and VP of operations and strategy.

Gilbert Bailon, executive editor of news platforms for Chicago Public Media, no longer works for the company.

Bailon told Current that he was offered a temporary undefined role as chief of staff. “My job would have been eliminated after three months,” he said. “I turned it down. My job was eliminated. I did not resign.”

Bailon joined WBEZ in 2023 as executive editor. Before that, he was executive editor for KERA in Dallas. He has also been editor-in-chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and editor of Al Día, a Spanish-language newspaper, website and sister publication to the Dallas Morning News.

“I’m heading back to the Dallas area after two years at Chicago Public Media,” Bailon wrote on LinkedIn. “Plans for the next phase are cooking in the oven. But through the end of the year, it will be botas, barbacoa y beerongas con amigos and familia in the Lone Star State. I’m always game for flautas or tacos in Oak Cliff. Nos vemos pronto. La lucha sigue.”

Content

Jennifer Pak joined NPR as China correspondent in its Beijing bureau. She most recently covered China as a correspondent for Marketplace. Before that, she reported on South China for The Telegraph and worked as a producer and later a Malaysia correspondent for the BBC. In a newsroom memo to NPR staff, Chief International Editor Didi Schanche highlighted Pak’s language skills and knowledge of English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish and French.

Governance

American Public Television announced the results of its June 2025 board of trustees meeting. Rob Dunlop, CEO of Cascade PBS in Seattle, was appointed board chair for a two-year term; he succeeds former Houston Public Media GM Lisa Trapani Shumate, who left the station in May. Becky Magura, CEO of Nashville PBS, succeeds Dunlop as vice chair for a two-year term. Linda O’Bryon, a consultant for NETA Consulting, will serve a one-year term as treasurer and finance committee chair. Shumate will continue to serve on the board for one year as chair emerita, a non-voting role. Trustees who began three-year terms on the board include Jennifer Cook, executive director of WUCF in Orlando, Fla.; Debbie Hamlett, GM of Milwaukee PBS; Jim Rademaker, GM of WGVU Public Media in Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Donald Young, executive director of the Center for Asian American Media. Trustees whose terms on the board have ended are Ronnie Agnew, GM of NJ Advance Media; ​Steve McGowan, SVP of research for Reelz; and ​Candice Seiger, managing partner of Adret Advisors.

Fellowships

The Poynter Institute selected five public media journalists for its final Essential Skills for Rising Newsroom Leaders workshop of 2025. The group includes Sydney Dauphinais, news director for KRBD in Ketchikan, Alaska; Tim Peterson, managing producer of Wisconsin Today for Wisconsin Public Radio; Christina Phillips, senior news editor of New Hampshire Public Radio; Cynthia Rodriguez, senior editor for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting; and Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo, news director for WSKG Public Media in Binghamton, N.Y. The week-long workshop convenes a total of 31 newsroom managers in early December at Poynter’s campus in St. Petersburg, Fla., for hands-on training, lectures, group discussions and feedback sessions with coaches.

Independent filmmakers

Firelight Media distributed $580,000 in unrestricted grants to 18 filmmakers for documentary projects. The grants range from $20,000 to $50,000 and can be used for development, production, postproduction or distribution costs. “The elimination of federal support for public media has created a manufactured crisis for documentary filmmakers, especially those from Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities who have historically relied on public media and CPB-funded initiatives,” said Firelight CEO Loira Limbal in a news release. “We launched the Firelight Fund knowing there is an urgent need for timely, community-led storytelling about what frontline communities are experiencing right now.” The projects selected are:

• Lori Webster’s Signs & Wonders focuses on a Black woman, Valerie McMillan, who is the only hearing child of Deaf adults (OHCODA) and became a professional sign language interpreter to bridge generational gaps.
• Diego Estrada Bernu’s The Weight of a Dream (working title) follows a Venezuelan Taekwondo expert living in Aurora, Colo., as he chases a dream of competing in the world’s top MMA organizations and grapples with the challenges of living in a new country.
• Assia Boundaoui’s Within Sight and Sound chronicles two years of anti-war advocacy in Chicago related to the Israel-Hamas war.
• Christopher Frierson’s Untitled Cop City Project explores how, in the wake of protests in 2020, the city of Atlanta announced plans to construct the largest police training facility in America.
• Aurora Brachman’s Dear You documents how Grace James escaped an abusive marriage and fled to the U.S. from Kiribati, then found herself trapped in the U.S. asylum system for a decade.
• Lauren Waring Douglas’s Rooted features Germaine Jenkins, who created an urban farm on a city lot and brought fresh produce to a food desert in North Charleston, S.C.
• Christina Ramirez’s Norma follows Sister Norma Pimentel, a Catholic nun who has placed herself on the frontlines of America’s immigration crisis and faces backlash that threatens her career.
• Sara Chishti’s Taxi Driver recounts the plight of immigrant taxi drivers caught in New York City’s predatory medallion lending scheme.
• Christina DiPasquale’s Barrio Television recounts how Puerto Rican activists disrupted public television in the 1970s to create Realidades, the first bilingual Latino series in U.S. history.
• Sarah Krusen’s Soft blends archival imagery and interviews to explore the idea of “modern exhaustion” and how some look to heal.
• Shiraz Ahmed’s No Discount reveals how Detroit’s safety net cracked during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Enrique Pedraza-Boteros’s S.E.C.T.O.R. B documents how fears about autonomous surveillance systems are shaping the ways that some people move and gather.
• Razi Jafri’s Uncommitted focuses on Arab and Muslim American activists who launched a movement in 2024 protesting what they saw as the Democratic Party’s silence on calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
• Marialuisa Ernst’s A Place of Absence follows the Caravan of Mothers, a group of Central American women traveling in search of lost loved ones.
• Hao Wu’s TikTok Never Dies documents how three TikTok creators join a lawsuit against the federal government and discover that they must work with President Donald Trump to save the platform from being banned.
• So Yun Um’s Americana Bang Bang explores Asian American perspectives on gun ownership.
• Sonia Desai Rayka’s Untitled Camera Workshop Film follows a group of children who are navigating the uncertainties of asylum as they take photo walks across New York City to document the homes they’ve built and the places that have grown more hostile to them.
• Elise Hu’s Windswept examines how four different teens from Los Angeles deal with the upheaval of their lives after catastrophic wildfires, asking “When your world burns down, how do you grow up?”

Send news of “comings and goings” to people@current.org