A new director is ready to take the reigns of the recently formed Iowa Public Radio enterprise.

Cindy Browne, a Minnesota-based public broadcasting consultant, will become the executive director of Iowa Public Radio Sept. 1.

In the face of recent budget challenges, the Board of Regents decided to consolidate the public radio stations at Iowa State, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa, creating the new state radio group.

Browne said she is ready for the opportunities and challenges the new organization offers, although it will take some time to get up to speed.

“The thing about any new job is, you go into a new organization, so you have a learning curve. I am going into three new organizations, so just triple it,” she said.

Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance and member of the IPR executive council, said Browne’s experience in reaching compromises would be an asset to the station. Browne said her past experience in broadcasting and consulting public radio stations would be her greatest asset in guiding IPR.

“She has a lot of experience in consensus building, which, given the three stations, I think will be very helpful,” Madden said.

Browne said she will soon be visiting each station to meet the staff and people in the communities and learn about each station’s production operations.

In response to concerns expressed throughout the process, she said she would attempt to balance local and national programming.

“What is really important to me is what the community thinks about programming. I expect to have a lot of great conversations to find out what is really valued in terms of local and national programming,” Browne said.

Madden said he agreed that getting local input is important to the future of Iowa Public Radio.

“She wants to get out and travel Iowa to meet people in communities and get a sense of what people in Iowa want to have in public radio,” Madden said.

According to Current, a public broadcasting publication, Iowa-based public radio broadcasts are limited in Eastern and Western Iowa. Madden said expanding IPR’s coverage throughout all of Iowa is one of Browne’s priorities.

Madden also said the budgets and financing of the stations will be a challenge to be faced in the coming months.

“The Regents, when they created Iowa Public Radio, indicated when creating Iowa Public Radio that they wanted the stations to become more self-supportive,” he said.

Each university’s public radio stations have operated independently without regular cooperation in the past.

The consolidation of the three public radio stations to function at Iowa Public Radio will prove to be a challenge in coming months, but Madden said he is confident in Browne’s leadership abilities.