Find Your Mentor

Laura Lee is the news director of BPR, the NPR affiliate for Western North Carolina. She loves coaching on job negotiation and life as a new manager.

She began her journalism career at NPR producing content for the Washington desk, All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. As assistant news director and then managing editor at WUNC North Carolina Public Radio, she oversaw production of a live daily show, The State of Things. She worked as managing editor of a statewide education journalism start-up and as an editor and writer at Edutopia. She also served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide nonprofit investigative newsroom.

Laura graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and international studies. She worked as an educator with a civic education organization and then as a program administrator for two Fulbright grant programs. She received her J.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law in 2007. Laura briefly strayed from her Tar Heel allegiance in 2011 to obtain a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland where she was an Eleanor Merrill Fellow.