Tina Lacdao Pamintuan has spent over 20 years in public media as a journalist, educator, and leader. As the CEO of St. Louis Public Radio, she helms the station’s fundraising, operations, programming, and editorial teams. This multifaceted role also includes being the liaison for the station’s FCC license holder, the University of Missouri, and the station’s advisory board, Friends of KWMU, Inc. She began her career at National Public Radio after graduating from Georgetown University where she studied philosophy and physics. Before making the leap to Missouri, Tina made her home in cities along the west and east coasts. In San Francisco, she was the general manager of KALW, where she founded the nonprofit KALW Public Media and negotiated a long-anticipated legal agreement with the station’s license holder to operate the station independently from the city.
Over a short tenure, she brought the station into labor and FCC compliance and led the station’s first professional rebranding and marketing efforts. She also programmed the station to attract a more diverse and younger listening audience, bringing more BIPOC voices to air both nationally and locally. As part of the station’s new eclectic music initiative, KALW also saw the opening of its first studio in the east bay under her leadership.
In New York, she created and directed the audio journalism program at The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY where she taught radio writing and reporting, news magazine production, audio documentary, and oral history. She now enjoys hearing former students on-air reporting from stations across the country, launching their own investigative series and podcasts and producing and hosting for nationally syndicated programs. As Mesa Refuge’s Bernstein Parker Activist Writer Fellow, she worked on op-eds about the “newsroom reckonings” over the last few years and most recently since the killing of George Floyd. Tina is also a former Mesa Refuge board member.