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.

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