Susan Goldberg is Editorial Director of National Geographic Partners and Editor In Chief of National Geographic Magazine. As Editorial Director, she is in charge of all publishing ventures, including digital journalism, magazines, books, maps, children and family, and travel and adventure. She was named Editorial Director in October 2015 and Editor in Chief of the magazine in April 2014. She is the 10th editor of the magazine since it was first published in October 1888.
Under her leadership in 2017, National Geographic was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for its issue about gender and the magazine received numerous other awards for photography, storytelling and graphics. In 2016, National Geographic magazine won a National Magazine Award for best website; in 2015, it won two National Magazine Awards and the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. In March 2015, she received the Exceptional Woman in Publishing Award from Exceptional Women in Publishing.
Before her employment at National Geographic, Goldberg was executive editor for federal, state and local government coverage for Bloomberg News in Washington. She started at Bloomberg in 2010. In 2013, she was voted one of Washington’s 11 most influential women in the media by Washingtonian magazine; in 2017, Washingtonian again selected Goldberg, naming her among the most powerful women in Washington across professions.
From 2007 to 2010, she was editor of The Plain Dealer, the daily newspaper of Cleveland and the largest newspaper in Ohio. Prior to that, from 2003-2007, she was the executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, and served as the paper’s managing editor from 1999-2003. From 1989 to 1999, Goldberg worked at USA Today, including stints as a deputy managing editor of the News, Life and Enterprise sections. Previously, she worked as a reporter and editor at the Detroit Free Press. She began her career as a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
A Michigan native, Goldberg has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University, where she now funds the Susan Goldberg Scholarship at the university’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences’ School of Journalism. She is active in professional journalism organizations, and in 2012-13 was president of the American Society of News Editors. She is on the boards of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at MSU and previously was co-chair of the Medill School of Journalism’s Board of Visitors at Northwestern University. She also is on the board of the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington and is a member of the International Women’s Forum.
Goldberg lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Geoffrey Etnire, a real estate lawyer.