President & CEO, Rocky Mountain Public Media

Amanda Mountain grew up a military brat and has called Colorado home off-and-on since 1992. She is a first-generation college graduate and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Denver in Organizational Leadership and Change Management. She is the first female CEO in Rocky Mountain Public Media history and since stepping into the role six years ago, she has led the organization to many notable successes, including fully-funding and building the Buell Public Media Center, an innovative home for local journalism entities seeking to create collective impact; restructuring the organization to be digital-first; launching a new multi-platform Content strategy to effectively attract and engage new audiences; implementing a new operating model leveraging user-centered design; and creating and nurturing a diverse, inclusive and equitable organizational culture where everyone is supported in doing their best work.

She has over 25 years of experience in the media business, most notably with Freedom Communications, where she was named one of the top 20 Newspaper executives in the country by Presstime Magazine, and Viacom, where she helped pioneer cross-platform marketing strategies under the Viacom Plus arm, created by Mel Karmazin. Amanda has also worked as a journalist, publishing over 250 articles for various local news outlets, covering topics related to media and the non-profit sector.

In 2021 and 2022, Mountain was named one of the “Most Influential Women in Radio” by Radio Ink magazine. In 2020, she received an Emmy Award for Overall Excellence and a duPont-Columbia Award for Investigative Journalism in 2018. In 2022, Mountain was admitted into the prestigious Sulzberger Fellowship at Columbia Journalism School where she’s working to shape the future of journalism with a cohort of 23 journalists from around the world.

Mountain is proud to be the current Board Chair for the Public Television Major Market Group in addition to serving on the Digital Marketing Advisory Committee of PBS.