AMANDA MOUNTAIN PUBLIC MEDIA LEADER PUTS A PREMIUM ON TRUST.

• Author: Ryckman, Lisa
• Position: GOOD COMPANY

It seems fitting that Amanda Mountain named her daughter after Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and war, since she herself is a champion of an industry under siege. As head of Rocky Mountain Public Media, Mountain works to enhance the free flow of information across Colorado at a time when public trust in media is low and the First Amendment seems more important--and more embattled--than ever.

A military brat and the first in her family to attend college, Mountain earned a degree in media management from the University of Colorado and dove instantly into newspaper management with Freedom Communications. She came to Rocky Mountain Public Media seven years ago as the first female CEO in its history and one of the youngest public media CEOs in the country.

Her vision for Colorado's public media includes shoring up resource-starved traditional media throughout the state with localized investigative journalism from five "innovation centers" and turning a blighted block of downtown Denver into the $30 million Buell Public Media Center, slated for completion by 2020.

All that, along with growing and maintaining public television's audience and its trust, might seem daunting, but Mountain welcomes the challenge.

As for budding warrior Freyja, who is just 2, Mountain believes she'll grow into her name.

"It definitely arms her well," she says, "to go out into the world and take control."

Amanda Mountain: President & CEO, Rocky Mountain Public Media

Hometown: Colorado Springs

Age: 41

Website: www.rmpbs.org

What's she reading: "Leaders Eat Last," by Simon Sinek

What she's watching: PBS NewsHour--every day

Her advice on how to avoid so-called "fake news": The more you rely on social media alone, the more likely you are to be susceptible to false information.

ColoradoBiz: What do you see as the role of public media in the current climate?

Amanda Mountain: According to the latest Pew research, only 26 percent of the public actually trusts the media. At the same time, PBS has been named the most trusted public institution in the country 14 years running. So I see the role that we play as a vital one, really leveraging the public trust people have placed in us consistently throughout the years to create more opportunities for civil discourse around issues that are difficult to talk about and may not be talked about at all in a productive way at the community level and then also for us to play an even more bold and aggressive role in telling stories that...