Torey Malatia's Bio

When creative radio programming is the topic, This American Life is the example. When NPR first housed a show outside of Washington DC, it wasn't in Culver City, California, but Chicago with Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me. And when producers from around the world get together to stretch the boundaries of sound, the forum is the Third Coast International Audio Festival.

These are merely the three most audible examples of innovation issuing from enlightened management. And the free-range intellectual engineering imagination-come-true is Torey Malatia.

Torey holds undergraduate and master's degrees in English literature, and has completed two additional years of advanced coursework at Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies. His first exposure to radio came as a student at Arizona State University.

In addition to print experience which included stints as a feature writer and arts columnist, Torey Malatia's radio resume is an example of leadership from the ground up -- over the past 30 years he's been a host, producer, account executive, music director, program director, and station manager for commercial and public radio in formats ranging from classical music to news/talk. For the past seven years, Torey has served as president and general manager of WBEZ -- which now has second largest weekly public radio audience in the nation.

As a programming director, Torey built carriage on the Beethoven Satellite Network from 4 to 150 stations in four years. His frequent "Think" pieces in the public broadcast newspaper Current drive dialog throughout the industry. And this year he was selected to receive the PRI Innovator Award.

"I'd argue that public radio is at its most successful when it doesn't follow formula," Torey has said. And that anti-formula formula works. When bestowing the Innovator Award, WNYC president Laura Walker praised Malatia for passing the acid test, "fostering an environment where innovative thinking results in extraordinary programming." That assessment is broadly endorsed by millions of listeners who tune in to Chicago Public Radio and WBEZ's nationally-distributed shows.