Born in Washington, D.C., in 1943, Cobb served as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi during the 1960s. He later started a bookstore, lived in Tanzania, and worked for the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa.

He began his journalism career in 1974 as a Capitol Hill reporter for WHUR Radio. Two years later he became a foreign affairs reporter for National Public Radio. He left NPR in 1979 and worked as a freelance writer and reporter. Clients included PBS’s Frontline and the Africa News Service.

From 1985 until 1996 Cobb was a staff writer for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine. His subjects ranged from Bangladesh to North Carolina to Zimbabwe.

In 1995 Cobb’s radio report on Eritrea won the Harry Chapin Award for best radio broadcasting about a developing nation.

Cobb sits on the board of directors of Africa News and is working on a book about the Algebra Project of Bob Moses.