The general manager of the region’s Tri States Public Radio stations has been accepted into a leadership cohort designed to add diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to all aspects of public media.
TSPR General Manager Heather L. Norman was named to the fifth cohort of the Public Media Diversity Leaders Initiative, through The Riley Institute at Furman University in South Carolina. The first of five meetings will be held Feb. 1, and the cohort, of about 30 leaders from across the United States, will meet remotely through early June.
Norman heard about the opportunity through an online group of public media leaders she is part of. According to the initiative’s website, the program’s curriculum incorporates “collaborative exercises, scenario analyses and audio/visual tools that introduce strategic DEI frameworks to guide development of actionable plans.”
“This was recommended by a representative on the list as a good program for diversity for the stations,” said Norman. “This is a wholistic look at diversity, whether it’s through personnel or programming. It is highly interactive and in public media, as a whole, looking at how we can serve the community, with an eye toward telling the stories of more voices.”
Norman came to TSPR in 2014, working first in Galesburg as the underwriting and outreach coordinator. She took over as general manager in August 2021 and is based at the Macomb station, on the campus of Western Illinois University. She applied for the diversity initiative in Fall 2022.
TSPR covers all or part of 20 counties in northeast Missouri, southeast Iowa and west central Illinois.
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