After a national search, NPR announces that Mary Louise Kelly will officially move into the All Things Considered host chair on January 17, following Robert Siegel’s retirement. Mary Louise combines sterling editorial judgment, intellectual depth and rigor, and a broad array of interests with a collaborative spirit. She will be a strong partner to the rest of the ATC team. She's no stranger to audiences, with numerous occasions guest hosting across NPR news programs, as well as her leading work as National Security Correspondent on the ongoing investigation of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections. She is eager to work with the ATC team and continue the program's excellence.
Leaving All Things Considered in January is Kelly McEvers, who will be expanding her role with Embedded as full-time host and executive producer. As she does, Embedded will expand to become a regular, premiere outlet for NPR's original, in-depth journalism. Embedded builds on Kelly's inexhaustible curiosity and passion for tackling complicated, challenging subjects at the center of our culture. Kelly and the Embedded team will bring audiences even more enterprise reporting from across NPR and Member stations and be positioned to react even more quickly to current news.
Mary Louise Kelly’s first assignment at NPR was senior editor of All Things Considered. She launched NPR's intelligence beat in 2004. After one particularly tough trip to Baghdad, she decided to try trading the spy beat for spy fiction. Her debut espionage novel, Anonymous Sources, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. It's a tale of journalists, spies, and Pakistan's nuclear security. Her second novel, The Bullet, followed in 2015.
A Georgia native, Mary Louise's first job was pounding the streets as a local political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched Public Radio International's The World. The following year Mary Louise moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service.
Mary Louise graduated from Harvard University in 1993 with degrees in government and French language and literature. Two years later, she completed a master's degree in European Studies at Cambridge University in England.