Robert McMahon is Editor-at-Large for CFR Digital, where he oversees backgrounders, timelines, and the broader body of explanatory and educational content across the think tank.
McMahon previously served as managing editor, building and supervising an editorial team that produced newsletters, explainers, podcasts, long-form interactives, and videos in collaboration with CFR fellows and scholars. Digital features under his editorial supervision have won multiple Emmy, Overseas Press Club, Online News Association, and Webby awards. For more than fifteen years, he co-hosted the weekly podcast The World Next Week.
McMahon’s journalism career has ranged from daily newspaper reporting to writing, producing, and broadcasting on global affairs for digital media formats. Starting as a local news reporter in New York State, he moved to the Associated Press, where in 1990 he edited dispatches on the fall of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, and successive Balkan wars for AP’s world desk. He has focused on foreign affairs coverage ever since, including as a news editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany. He was RFE/RL’s news director in Prague, Czech Republic, and UN correspondent in New York.
He is a regular CFR representative and contributor to the annual National Speech and Debate tournament, where he has judged competitions on foreign policy topics among high school contestants.
McMahon has written extensively on democracy promotion, public diplomacy, human rights, arms control, UN peacekeeping, and nation-building. McMahon has a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from the State University of New York at Cortland and a master’s degree in international relations from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
