Rebecca Mowbray joined BGR in January 2022 as the group’s President, CEO and Samuel Zemurray Chair in Research Leadership. Mowbray came to BGR with a breadth of experience in the public policy field from a career focused on governmental reform, accountability and transparency. She worked as a journalist for 18 years for the Times-Picayune, Houston Chronicle and Los Angeles Times. After leaving journalism she spent nearly eight years in the New Orleans Office of Inspector General as an Assistant Inspector General and Program Evaluator. Immediately before joining BGR served as Deputy Commissioner for Public Affairs in the Louisiana Department of Insurance.

Mowbray has also worked overseas. She edited copy at a newspaper and taught at a journalism school in Jakarta, Indonesia, on a professional fellowship awarded to distinguished scholars by the Henry Luce Foundation. She also taught English in former Czechoslovakia.

Mowbray’s work is informed by master’s degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She graduated from Skidmore College with a degree in political science and English.

She lives in New Orleans with her husband, a professor at Tulane. When she’s not working, she enjoys riding her bicycle on the Mississippi River levee and paddling the kayak she built in the waterways throughout the region.