“One of our donors bought us a super-duper machine that churns out really great espresso all day long. When I’m at home I drink English tea, made in a teapot, with milk.”
 
  “Doodling keeps my mind focused. Colored markers tend to migrate to my desk.”

Flo Rogers is in perpetual motion as she answers questions from behind her desk at Las Vegas’s flagship public radio station, KNPR, located on the main campus of the College of Southern Nevada. The president and general manager of Nevada Public Radio, Rogers gesticulates with her hands as she speaks, emitting the kinetic energy she uses to oversee News 88.9 KNPR-FM and Classical 89.7 KCNV-FM, a network of 13 repeater stations and translators that cover four southwestern states, plus fund-raising drives that keep them all going. “I do operate at quite a high frequency,” the British-born broadcast veteran says. “That is true.”

If anything, Rogers will now need to operate at an even higher frequency: In addition to her regular duties, she recently became an NPR national board member. Indeed, she had just returned from the swearing-in ceremony in Washington, DC, before her Vegas interview. The national board does not dictate specific content but instead creates overall NPR guidelines—on strategy, policy, and finances—for member stations to follow. The board also approves budgets at a time when donations from listeners and corporate sponsors are harder to come by.

“One of the primary responsibilities of the board of directors is to hire and evaluate the CEO of NPR, just as my board of directors here at Nevada Public Radio hires me and evaluates me,” Rogers says.

Rogers is so preoccupied with her growing responsibilities that she has yet to find time to hang framed images of singers John Cale and Lou Reed, George Harrison, and poster art from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival on the walls of her office. Instead, the artwork has sat on the floor since sometime in 2007, she believes—colorful evidence of a life too busy for such matters as decorating the office she spends more time in than her own home. The office does have a vintage radio on one shelf, a memento of one of Rogers’s finest accomplishments as general manager. The radio plays only “Sucked into the Tunnels,” KNPR’s award-winning report by current news director Adam Burke about homeless people who live in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas. NPR and the BBC broadcast that report around the world in 2009.

In the Beginning
The Isle of Wight poster also reminds Rogers of an important moment in her broadcast career. Shortly after earning a master’s degree from San Diego State University, she returned to her hometown, the Isle of Wight, to work as a DJ for Isle of Wight radio, and made a documentary about the iconic 1970 installment of the town’s music festival, which aired on its 20th anniversary. After that assignment, she returned to San Diego and worked two part-time jobs: an overnight gig as a board operator at KPBS public radio, and a weekend DJ shift at a local rock station, 91X. Her life as an itinerant radio gypsy had begun.

Las Vegas came calling in 2001. Lamar Marchese, KNPR’s longtime general manager and founder of Nevada Public Radio, hired Rogers as program director. Not long after, she worked with nowr-etired broadcaster Gwen Castaldi to develop the hour-long public affairs call-in show State of Nevada, which debuted in 2003. Last July the weekday show celebrated its 2,000th episode, and it continues as an example of Rogers’s commitment to the community.

Rogers became general manager when Marchese retired in 2007. Her stay in Vegas has been lengthy compared to an average broadcast professional’s market tenure. “When I came in 2001, I thought I would stay only a couple of years, like so many other people,” she says. The turning point came while she attended the 2004 Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce leadership program. Around that time, she recalls, Marchese began advising her to consider applying to be the next KNPR general manager.

“It was going through that leadership program that made me realize I really do care about this community, and I would like to be here as long as my board of directors is happy with me,” she says. “Some people run for the national boards because they want to go to a bigger market. But I want to use [my position] to get people to say, ‘Look at that team she’s got there. Look at what she’s doing.’”