WAMU/Washington Names New GM
• After what has been described as a competitive and lengthy search process, American University’s NPR affiliate 88.5 WAMU/Washington has named Erika Pulley-Hayes as its new General Manager. According to a station spokesperson, Pulley-Hayes, who starts August 30, will “oversee all aspects of WAMU’s operations and a staff of more than 100, and she will serve as WAMU’s ambassador to the Washington, D.C. region and the public media system.”
Pulley-Hayes (pictured, left) is currently President & CEO of Community Communications, Inc., and since January 2020, has managed two public radio stations in Central Florida — WMFE/Orlando and WMFV in The Villages. In September 2020, Pulley-Hayes was elected to the NPR Board of Directors.
The new gig marks a return to our Nation’s Capital for Pulley-Hayes, who has worked in public media since 2005 and previously served as VP of Radio for the D.C.-based nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports more than 1,500 publicly-owned media organizations across the U.S. — including WAMU — with taxpayer funds. “Washington, D.C., is really a public radio station’s dream market,” Pulley-Hayes said. “D.C. is the seventh media market in the country. That’s a big deal. So I just think there are so many positives about this opportunity about this city, at this university, with this station. If you’re going to be in public media, this is where you want to be.”
Pulley-Hayes succeeds JJ Yore, who stepped down last August after six years at WAMU. Yore’s departure came after a DCist investigation that uncovered allegations of sexual harassment against a former reporter and tweets by former and current employees who said the station had a history of mistreating staffers of color.
WAMU considered more than 130 candidates for the role, according to Seth Grossman, a VP at American University and Chief of Staff to the President, who led the station’s search committee and also served as interim GM of WAMU since Yore’s departure. “The process was very competitive, and it produced an excellent new general manager for WAMU,” Grossman said. “In Erika Pulley-Hayes, we have found the perfect leader to take the helm of WAMU and lead it into a new era.”
