ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (February 19, 2024) – The Poynter Institute, a global leader in journalism, is pleased to announce the appointment of four new members to its National Advisory Board, which offers guidance and ideas to help Poynter better meet the needs of the media industry.
The new members are:
- Stella M. Chávez, immigration reporter, KERA, Dallas
- Ramón Escobar, senior vice president, talent recruitment and development, CNN
- Kathleen McGrory, investigations editor, New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship
- Adrienne Roark, president, content development and integration, CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures
“These talented and experienced journalists and executives bring us fresh ideas, diverse perspectives and a terrific sense of the on-the-ground priorities in our business right now. Those contributions help Poynter develop programming, training and partnerships that truly meet the needs of journalists, serve news consumers and help our mission to strengthen democracy,” said Neil Brown, Poynter’s president.
Poynter’s National Advisory Board, including its newest members, will join the Poynter Board of Trustees in convening in St. Petersburg on Feb. 26 and 27 to discuss pressing issues affecting journalism, including artificial intelligence and support for local news.
A closer look at the new members:
Stella M. Chávez
Stella M. Chávez covers immigration for KERA, the NPR station in Dallas. Throughout her career, she’s focused on telling deeply reported and intimate stories about diverse communities. As the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and a Mexican American mother, Chávez strives to spark a greater understanding of immigrants and refugees through her reporting.
Stella M. Chavez, reporter, KERA public radio, Dallas
She has covered the impact of immigration raids, including breaking a national story of a large-scale raid in Allen, Texas in 2019. She also reported on mass shootings in Uvalde and El Paso. Previously, she covered education for the station, producing several multi-part projects, including Generation One about immigrant students and how they’re learning.
Before her career in public radio, Stella spent more than a decade in newspapers, reporting for The Dallas Morning News, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida.
She has received national and state awards, including a 2021 IRE award for the collaborative series “Hot Days: Heat’s Mounting Death Toll on Workers in the US”. In 2007, she received the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in National Reporting for “Yolanda’s Crossing,” a seven-part series that reconstructs the 5,000-mile journey of a young sexual-abuse survivor from Oaxaca, Mexico to the U.S.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor of journalism. Since 2017, she has served as a regional judge for the annual Livingston Awards.
Ramón Escobar
As senior vice president of talent recruitment and development for CNN Worldwide, he is responsible for the recruitment of all on and off-air talent as well as all contributors for CNN. He’s also responsible for the internal development and coaching of anchors, correspondents, contributors and producers. Based in New York City, he started at CNN in 2012 He also served as the vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion for CNN Worldwide from 2017-19 and continues to play a vital role in diversity and inclusion efforts for CNN.
Ramon Escobar, senior vice president, talent recruitment and development, CNN
He came to CNN after several years at Telemundo and NBC. He’s the only person to have been both the head of Telemundo’s news division (2009-11) and head of the entertainment division (2004-07). He was one of NBC’s key executives to oversee the integration of NBC and Telemundo after it was acquired by GE in 2002. NBC tapped him to be its first entertainment and programming head and build out a new original programming strategy for U.S. Spanish Language network.
Escobar was vice president of Sucherman Consulting Group in New York, where he helped launch Discovery’s Animal Planet and TLC programming strategies. He’s also consulted for ABC News, BBC America and Telemundo.
Escobar’s first cable news stint was as vice president at MSNBC in charge of all live news and daytime programming. He guided the network through coverage of the 2000 election and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He started in local news and has the distinction of being the youngest news director in history of an NBC-owned and operated station.
Escobar is known for his mentoring of talent on and off the TV screen. He is a frequent visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute. He is the chairman of the Advisory Board of the Kaplan School of Journalism at Florida International University in Miami. He is also a lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Escobar earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is a graduate of the Institute of Political Journalism at Georgetown University.
Kathleen McGrory
Kathleen McGrory is an investigations editor for the New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. She was previously a reporter on ProPublica’s national staff.
Kathleen McGrory, investigations editor, New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship
Before that, McGrory was an investigative editor and reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, where she and a colleague won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and were finalists for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Their work prompted federal investigations, policy changes, millions of dollars in settlements and the passage of a new law.
McGrory holds degrees from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and she is an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. She began her career at the Miami Herald. Her work has also been honored with a Polk award, an IRE award, a Scripps Howard award and the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism.
Adrienne Roark
Veteran CBS executive Adrienne Roark was named president of content development and integration for CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures in October 2023. She is responsible for bringing together the teams across these businesses to create and share content to grow audience reach and impact, industry leadership and organizational effectiveness. Roark also leads CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures’ investments in data journalism as well as investigative and environmental reporting, including weather technology and climate coverage. Roark previously served as president of CBS Stations, and in her new role she continues to oversee CBS-owned stations in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. She also continues to oversee the CBS Local News Innovation Lab, a curated team of CBS News and Stations employees who experiments with next-generation storytelling, workflows and production models.
Adrienne Roark, president, content development and integration, CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures
Photo: Michele Crowe/CBS News
She is a three-time regional Emmy® award winner and has received six regional Edward R. Murrow Awards.
Roark rejoined CBS in 2021 after spending seven years in Portland, first as general manager of CBS affiliate KOIN-TV, then as general manager of Fox affiliate KPTV-TV and MyNetwork station KPDX-TV. Prior to that, Roark served for four years as vice president and news director at KTVT-TV and KTXA-TV, in Dallas-Fort Worth. She joined CBS Stations in 2007 at WFOR-TV and WBFS-TV in Miami, where she was promoted to news director.
Roark’s news background also includes positions with stations in Florida and Ohio. An Ohio native, she began her career in Columbus, after graduating from The Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in communications. Roark is a Poynter Ethics Fellow and Carole Kneeland Fellowship alum and board member.
