CELESTE HEADLEE

Celeste Headlee, an award-winning journalist and 22-year veteran of NPR, PRI and PBS, leads Headway. Celeste has been a leader in the area of diversity and inclusion for more than a decade. She served as the managing editor for NPR’s Next Generation Radio, focused on training journalists of color, and more recently has led a series of discussions on racism in public radio with hundreds of employees and journalists from around the U.S. That work recently culminated in the publication of an open letter: “An Anti-Racist Future: A Vision and Plan for the Transformation of Public Media,” outlining specific strategies in five areas that can help bring about lasting change in the industry.

Celeste is a leading expert in communication. Her book, We Need to Talk, is used as a textbook in many university communications programs and her TEDx talk on conversation has more than 23 million views. Her new book, Speaking of Race, on how to talk about race regardless of your color or politics, will be released in the fall of 2021.

Celeste has led workshops with the team at NPR’s All Things Considered, focused on addressing longstanding issues with bias and discrimination. She also consulted with KQED on making its newsroom more equitable and advised several station managers on how to move forward with anti- racist reform.