Coming Full Circle At NPR

For Meg Goldthwaite, MBA ’96, taking on the chief marketing officer role at National Public Radio, one of the country’s most trusted news organizations, was like coming full circle in what she calls a serendipitous career journey. Journalism is where it all started.

“My first job out of school was working at a local TV news station,” she says. “I pretty quickly learned that I didn’t have the chops to be a journalist, although I admire journalists immensely.”

What she does have is the mind for marketing and the skills of an effective leader – which Goldthwaite found through a series of fortunate events after earning her undergraduate degrees in French and government.

After she left that first journalism job, Goldthwaite’s soul-searching led her to a job as a computer consultant and later landed in the marketing department. She had found a new passion, and pursued it by getting her MBA at Maryland Smith, a decision that propelled her career and taught her skills that she has pulled on in myriad ways since. After Smith, she spent 15 years at telecommunications company MCI, which was ultimately bought by Verizon. Then came her next career transition.

“After I spent that time in the for-profit space, I decided I want to give back to the world and use my business sense and acumen for good, which is how I got into working in the conservation space at the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, and ultimately what led me here to NPR,” she says.

Goldthwaite joined NPR in December 2016, bringing 25 years of experience in branding, visual storytelling, digital communications and media to Washington, D.C.-based public media brand. She is excited about how the organization is moving forward with new ways for listeners to get content through digital platforms and podcasts, not just by tuning in on their radios.

“We have gone from being just purveyors of news – which is fantastic – to being creators of content, which allows us to honor our brand as a storyteller, but also in new and different ways,” she says.

She says the way NPR remains authentic to its brand is how individuals should think about their personal brands and how they market themselves. It’s how Goldthwaite has thought about her personal brand and the jobs she has sought throughout her career.

“What I look for in a job, first and foremost, is something that I can be proud of, work that I can feel good about,” says Goldthwaite, who also held leadership positions Women for Women International and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. “I’m a mom of three kids and I have long said that I want to do something that makes it worth leaving them at home, work that I am proud of and excited to be doing.”

She is happy to have again found that at NPR, along with experiences she can learn from and feel challenged by.

“I’ve been really fortunate that all of the jobs I’ve had have been really fun,” Goldthwaite says. “Most of them have had at least some sort of ‘oh my gosh, it’s crazy to think that I can do this’ aspect to them. Certainly when I began, and oftentimes a lot of the projects that I work on, I have no idea how to do when I first start them. But I look forward to those challenges and I look forward to bringing all of my resources to solving them.”

Goldthwaite and Sherika Ekpo, MBA ’09, global diversity and inclusion lead at Google AI, joined Maryland Smith professor Nicole M. Coomber to speak at Smith’s annual Women Inspire event, held March 5, 2020, on the university’s campus. Read more about the event.

Related news: Goldthwaite talks about honoring your brand while innovating. Watch video.

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