As president and chief executive officer, Torey oversees all day-to-day operations and programming and production decisions at Chicago Public Radio.

Torey joined the staff of Chicago Public Radio in July 1993 as vice president of programming, soon appointed station manager in 1995. In 1996, he became president and general manager. He is the first non-profit leader ever to receive the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall Of Fame. In 1995, he co-founded, with Ira Glass, This American Life, a weekly radio series for which Glass and Malatia jointly received a George Foster Peabody Award in 1996.  He has also received the 2003 Public Radio International (PRI) Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In 2001, he was inducted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame as the first not-for-profit representative to receive this honor.

Under his leadership, Chicago Public Radio has developed its most significant national initiatives and programs including The Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2000, Sound Opinions, in 2005, Wait, Wait. . . Don’t Tell Me!, a co-production with National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. in 1998.  In addition he has created numerous award-winning local programs, among them Metropolis, in 1994, Odyssey and Eight Forty-Eight, both in 1998. 

Torey began his career in radio in 1972 as a part-time announcer for former commercial classical station KHEP-FM in Phoenix, Arizona. After college and graduate school, he returned to KHEP-FM in 1979, becoming its music director in 1982.  In 1985, he became program director for the Boston Globe’s classical station KONC-FM also in Phoenix. Torey moved to his first home, Chicago, and to work for commercial classical station WFMT 98.7 FM, where he designed and led the programming of WFMT’s the Beethoven Satellite Network, a classical music format service that grew to include 150 public radio affiliates during his tenure. In the early 1990s, he became director of programming for KUOW 94.9 FM, Seattle’s public radio station, before returning to Chicago to work for the Capital Cities/ABC-owned WLS 890 AM and FM.

Torey has an M.A. and B.A. in English Literature from Arizona State University and has done postgraduate work at the University of Toronto in Middle English literature at U of T’s Medieval Centre.

Born and reared in Oak Park, Illinois, Torey resides in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago with his wife, artist Elizabeth Carson Manley.

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