Marta Tellado: Ten Years of Leadership at Consumer Reports

YONKERS, NY – This month marks ten years for Marta L. Tellado as President and CEO of Consumer Reports — the singular and storied non-profit organization that works with consumers to instill fairness, safety, and transparency in the marketplace.

Tellado, who has announced she is planning to step down from the leadership role, has overseen a period of dramatic transformation for CR, modernizing and diversifying the nearly 90-year-old institution to better meet consumers’ needs in a changing world. CR’s recent innovations have included pioneering the testing of digital products and services for privacy and data security — as well as introducing an ethical AI-powered tool, AskCR, to help consumers navigate the modern marketplace with ease and with trust. CR has continuously evolved in recent years to become a force for consumers’ interests and values in a digital age where technology is outrunning consumer protections.

“Leading this remarkable team has been a tremendous honor,” said Tellado. “Our partnership with consumers has never been more relevant. Together over the last ten years, we have transformed this iconic enterprise, making it fit for purpose in an age when consumer harms are all too often hidden from us and when too much of the information we seek to guide our everyday decisions is untrustworthy. I am enormously proud of the work we’ve done to re-shape today’s marketplace — through investigating and standing up to the world’s biggest brands, raising the bar on safety, and imbuing trusted consumer insights and independent data into how products and services are designed and into the hazards in our food and water that don’t meet the standards Americans deserve. By authoring groundbreaking digital standards and consumer protections, we are ensuring that the latest innovations serve consumers’ interests.”

Tellado will continue in the role until her successor is chosen, and she is working closely with members of CR’s Board of Directors to ensure a smooth transition. 

“We are deeply grateful to Marta for her extraordinary leadership and the legacy of innovation and success that she has built,” said Ellen Taus, Chair of CR’s Board of Directors. “In a time of unprecedented change for consumers on every front — from the rise of electric vehicles to the proliferation of fake online reviews — Marta has consistently helped steer CR ahead of the curve by investing in our institutional agility, our digital prowess, our internal and audience diversity, and our unique and influential role lifting up consumer voices.”

The search for the next leader of CR is being led by the Board’s Vice Chair, Russell Noles.  “Thanks in large part to Marta’s leadership, we are embarking on this search from a position of renewed impact and relevance in consumers’ lives,” said Noles. “The mission of CR is as vital today as it has ever been, and our work is well underway to identify a new leader who will carry forward the momentum that Marta has helped build over the last ten years — through innovative partnerships, trailblazing investigations and advocacy, and cutting-edge testing that makes a real difference in people’s lives.”

“From generation to generation, CR has helped build a better, safer marketplace for all, and I am truly grateful to have played a part in that ongoing journey,” added Tellado. “Consumers are steeped in deceptive marketing and subject to digital platforms that trace our every move to control what we see and the prices we pay. I am proud that Consumer Reports remains a harbor of truth – beholden to no one but people who want a fair shake.”

Tellado is the author of “Buyer Aware: Harnessing Our Consumer Power for a Safe, Fair, and Transparent Marketplace,” published in 2022 by Public Affairs. It chronicles the scale of challenges consumers face, especially in the digital marketplace, and what we must do to ensure consumer rights in the modern economy to strengthen democracy and promote economic equity.

As part of these efforts to improve the digital marketplace, CR recently announced a $5 million grant from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to ensure that safety, cybersecurity, and transparency are standard across digital products, and to address the challenges consumers now face from AI systems, digital finance platforms, and emerging technologies.

A Decade of Standing up for Consumers

Over the last ten years under Tellado’s leadership, CR has transformed its work and achieved major victories for consumers across three core areas: raising the bar on safety, standing up to big brands, and putting people at the center of innovation. 

Raising the bar on safety

In an age when safety threats have rapidly evolved — including not only dangerous products, contaminants in our food, and insufficient government standards, but increasingly complex digital threats as well — CR has evolved in turn, standing with consumers at those moments when the stakes are highest.

• Raised the voices of parents — paired with CR data insights — to help establish the first-ever national standards to prevent deadly furniture tip-over injuries to children. 
• Moved the market on car safety, improving the critical life-saving features, like rearview cameras, that come standard in new cars. Using our ratings and reviews to incentivize the marketplace is a critical part of this work. For example, after informing companies that having automatic emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian detection would improve the CR scores of their products, the percentage of models that came standard with that technology increased from 38% (2019 models) to 96% (2024 models). 
• Transformed CR’s state-of-the-art Auto Test Center, constructing a multi-lane auto test loop to evaluate the safety of the industry’s latest automated driving technologies.
• Empowered consumers in communities across the country with the tools to test their tap water, raising the dangers of PFAS chemicals lurking in our water, in collaboration with The Guardian US, Mississippi Spotlight, and others.
• Helped ban toxic food chemicals, co-sponsoring a Calirfonia bill that will impact food across the country. This includes Red Dye No. 3, the synthetic dye was banned by the FDA for use in cosmetics back in 1990 because of links to cancer.

Standing up to big brands

When companies fail to do right by consumers — and government fails to protect the people’s interests — CR is an independent force for accountability and change, harnessing the voices and experiences of consumers to level the playing field and deliver results.

• Uncovered and publicly called out the dangers of Fisher Price’s “Rock ‘n Play” and other infant sleepers that put children’s lives at risk, successfully advocating for a national law banning their sale.
• Exposing the hidden fees that TV companies charge, leading to a national law improving transparency by requiring cable and satellite providers to show all fees and taxes upfront. 
• Teamed with investigators at ProPublica to uncover the biased algorithms impacting your car insurance prices from companies like Allstate, Geico, and Liberty Mutual. 
• Sounded the alarm on the dangers of water beads to children, leading to the introduction of national legislation and retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Target to stop selling these products.
• Pressured Tesla to improve the braking of its Model 3, which had been far worse than any contemporary car CR tested. 

Putting people at the center of innovation

With innovation accelerating at lightning speed, CR has successfully brought its historic commitment to safety, security, and fairness from the physical world to the digital age — standing up for people’s interests as new technologies are unleashed, creating groundbreaking standards and tools for the digital age, and reinventing itself as an enterprise to earn trust and exert influence in a digital marketplace.

• Pioneered what it means to “hack in the public interest” by testing over 1,500 models of connected products and digital services for consumer privacy, safety and security, sparking a race to the top of companies seeking to improve their products, like smart TVs and video doorbells.  
• Infusion of digital talent creates a digital Innovation Lab, focusing on new ways to address consumers’ rights in the digital era, thanks to an initial $6 million philanthropic investment from Craig Newmark Philanthropies – the single largest gift in CR’s history and part of the more than $42 million raises from philanthropic partners over the last ten years. These partners include institutions such as the Ford Foundation, Sloan Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Flourish Ventures.
• Created first-of-their-kind tools like Permission Slip and Security Planner to empower the next generation of consumers to control their own personal data and safeguard their digital security.
• Evaluate digital finance tools, including popular payment, banking, and Buy Now Pay Later apps that people increasingly rely on, revealing vulnerabilities and needed improvements that serve consumers.
• Created an ethical AI tool, powered by CR’s trusted insights and data, called AskCR. It will put the extraordinary power of AI to work for consumers, with the potential to serve as a trusted agent answering questions and restoring customer service. 

Test for and reveal security flaws in popular apps like GoodRx and Glow, which compromised intimate information about users, and took action to fix them — resulting in major fines in some cases and stronger standards in all.