Jon Abbott is a nationally recognized media and social enterprise executive.

He served as President & CEO of GBH (also known as the WGBH Educational Foundation) from 2007 through 2022. Jon transformed the way GBH and public media create and distribute educationally rich content to millions of Americans across the nation. He expanded GBH’s media services, impact, and reach locally and nationally—on TV, radio, the Web, and mobile, in living rooms and classrooms. He championed GBH’s early adoption of digital technologies, new content creation models, best practices, and cost efficiencies that advanced public media’s capacity to produce programming and content in the public interest.

Under Abbott’s leadership, GBH invested in promising R&D projects to further public media’s mission.  Working closely with Thirteen/WNET and American Public Television, he co-led the launch of two national digital channels: Create (showcasing lifestyle programming) and World (nonfiction documentaries celebrating diverse voices). In partnership with PBS, he led the launch of PBS LearningMedia, a free national online service pioneered by GBH that offers classroom-ready digital resources tied to state and national curriculum standards; a service utilized educators in 50 states. Jon was instrumental in bringing public media leaders together to found and launch CDP, The Contributor Development Partnership, a Public Benefit Corporation that scales data management, analysis and fundraising for hundreds of non-profit organizations.

Prior to coming to GBH, he served as Senior Vice President for Development and Corporate Relations at PBS. He held executive roles with San Francisco public station KQED, where he developed the launch plan for KQED-FM, the first full NPR news format station in the country. A longtime jazz enthusiast, he got his start in broadcasting at Columbia University Station WKCR.

He has served on the boards of PBS, PRX, the Public Television Major Market Group, PRI (Public Radio International), National Public Media (NPM), American Documentary/POV, American Public Television (APT), PBS Distribution, Contributor Development Partnership (CDP), ArtsBoston, Pitzer College and Project Healthy Children.  He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a BA from Columbia University and an MBA from Stanford University.

March 2026