Emmy Award-winning journalist/historian/talk show host, Janus Adams, is the author of a three-volume saga of African-American history and culture: Glory Days: 365 Inspired Moments in African-American History; Freedom Days, a chronicle of the civil rights years; and, Sister Days, a "herstory" of African-America. A publisher and producer, she created the groundbreaking BackPax children's book-and-audio series. A long-term contributor to Essence Magazine, Ms. Adams' commentaries are a regular feature of NPR (National Public Radio), her OpEds have appeared via UPI.com and in USA Today, and her guest credits include CNN's TalkBack Live and NBC's Today Show.
Yamil Anglada is Media Director for Equality Now, an international women's rights advocacy organization. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from The University of Georgia in Athens. She worked as a publicist in the publishing industry for six years prior to joining the staff of Equality Now.
Taina Bien-Aime is the Executive Director of Equality Now, an international human rights organization that works for the protection of the rights of women and girls. Taina holds a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law and a Licence in Political Science from the University of Geneva and the Graduate School of International Studies, Switzerland. Prior to her appointment as Executive Director in 2001, Ms. Bien-Aimé served as the General Counsel of Equality Now, and has been a board member of the organization since 1993. Taina was Director of Business Affairs/Film Acquisition at Home Box Office from 1996 to 1999. She also practiced international corporate and intellectual property law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, a Wall Street law firm, from 1992 to 1996. She serves on the board of Women Make Movies.
Kathy Bonk co-founded the Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC) in 1988 and serves as its executive director. She is co-author of Guide to Strategic Communications for Nonprofits (1999). Kathy has worked on many multi-year, issue-oriented efforts for prominent foundations since 1988. These include: child welfare, for the Annie E. Casey, W.K. Kellogg and Edna McConnell Clark Foundations; international trainings for the Ford Foundation; and population and global health, for the Open Society Institute, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Compton, Dodge, Hewlett, Packard and Turner Foundations. In 1989, Kathy was awarded a Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellowship, which enabled her to work with women's organizations in Russia, the Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Previously, she was a public information officer for the U.S. Department of State and developed media policy recommendations for the International Women's Year Commission under Presidents Ford and Carter. Her government career also includes four years with the Justice Department in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division and she was a founder of the Center for Women and Work at the National Manpower Institute. She also directed the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund's Women Media Project and the NOW FCC/Media Committee.
Eve Ensler, award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, is touring 20 North American cities with her newest play The Good Body, following engagements on Broadway, in San Francisco, and in Seattle. Ensler is founder and artistic director of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. Her play, The Vagina Monologues has been translated into more than 35 languages and has run in theaters worldwide, including sold-out runs in New York and in London's West End. The 2002 documentary of the play aired on HBO and features Ensler's acclaimed performance of the piece. Her play Necessary Targets, set in a Bosnian refugee camp, played Off-Broadway in February 2002. Ensler's other plays include Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man and Extraordinary Measures. The Good Body, The Vagina Monologues, and Necessary Targets have been published by Villard/Random House, which will also publish Ms. Ensler's upcoming books Insecure at Last: Guidelines to Groundlessness and I Am an Emotional Creature. Ensler is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in playwriting, the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for leadership, and the 2002 Matrix Award. She is an executive producer of What I Want My Words to Do to You, a documentary about the writing group she has led since 1998 at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. The film had its world premiere at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the Freedom of Expression Award and it was seen on PBS's "P.O.V."
Gail Evans is the best selling author of Play Like A Man Win Like A Woman which has been translated into 18 languages. She has appeared in recent years on outlets such as The Today Show, USA Today, Larry King Live Show, and the New York Times. Her weekly syndicated radio segment It's Not Just A Man's World is syndicated to 1900 CNN radio affiliates throughout the United States, and her business advice column appears in Worthwhile Magazine. Her latest book, She Wins, You Win was published in 2003. Evans a veteran of CNN, was with the network from its inception until 2001. She was Executive Vice President for CNN and Executive Vice President of Domestic Networks for the CNN Newsgroup. She served as a member of the CNN Executive Committee and was chairperson of the CNN programming task force.
She serves as the chairperson of the Georgia Endowment for the Humanities and is a board member of the Society for Women's Health Research, the Radio Television News Directors Foundation, the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, The Society for Women's Business Research, the Atlanta Girls School, The International Women's Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1995, she was named to the YWCA's Academy of Women Achievers and is a Compass Award recipient of the Women's Leadership Exchange. She is a member of the Board of Visitors at the Georgia State University School of Law and the Kennesaw State Univ. Foundation and is currently a Visiting Professor at the School of Management at Georgia Tech.
Joan Gerberding, one of the highest ranking female executives in the radio industry, is Director of Radio Operations for New York City's Access 1 Communications, owner of more than 35 radio stations in the Northeast. Prior to Access 1, she was vice president of Arbitron Outdoor, continuing a 35+ year career in the media and broadcasting industries. As EVP/COO of Nassau Broadcasting Partners, in Princeton, N.J, she was part of the team that expanded that company from two stations to more than 20 stations across New Jersey, New York state and Pennsylvania. Having joined Nassau Broadcasting as Sales Development Manager in 1980, Gerberding quickly moved up the corporate ladder until, in 1997, she was asked to form a totally separate national sales division; in 2000, after successful running Jersey Radio Network and increasing national sales by $8 million, she was again asked to create a new division--Nassau Media Partners--and was named its president. This cutting edge division identified and then integrated digital media into consumer and commuter venues in New York City and New Jersey.
Gerberding, who is considered an expert in diversity in the radio industry, sits on the FCC Advisory Committee for Diversity in the Digital Age, is past president of American Women in Radio and Television, is on an Advisory Board for the Museum of Television and Radio and also advises the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C. She is a past board member of the Radio Advertising Bureau and consults with numerous broadcast related companies. In 2002, she was named the Number One Most Influential Women in Radio by Radio Ink magazine and was also named Broadcaster of the Year that same year. Recognized as a leader and mentor in the radio industry, Gerberding continues to actively encourage and support the advancement of women in the radio industry.
A trail-blazer for women in radio since the early '70s, Edie Hilliard spent the first half of her career on the station side, starting in marketing and promotion for a group of stations, then moving into sales in 1975 at KJR Seattle, where within two years she was named sales manager. In 1981 Edie became general manager at KING AM Seattle, one of the first women to hold that position in any major market.
In 1987 Edie moved to the syndication side of radio, heading up Seattle-based Broadcast Programming (BP), which provided music formats and programming services to radio stations. Within six years BP emerged as the leading syndicator of music formats, and in 1997 Edie moved BP into satellite-delivered daypart personality programs for music stations, beginning with Delilah, the hugely successful syndicated program for Adult Contemporary music stations, followed by country programs, Lia and Danny Wright, and other programs for AC stations. BP was acquired by Jones Media Networks, Ltd., in 1999, later merging with Jones Radio Networks (JRN), to form the largest independent network in the industry, providing programs and services to more than 5000 stations. As VP/COO of JRN, Edie had responsibility for all of JRN's radio programming operations, and served on the board of directors of Jones Media Networks.
In Spring 2005 Edie was recruited to serve as Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of the newly formed Women's Radio Network, LLC, to develop radio programming by and for women for distribution to commercial FM radio stations.
Throughout her career Edie has been active in industry associations and initiatives, including serving on the RAB and state association boards. Recipient of numerous industry awards for her achievements, Edie was selected by readers of Radio Ink as Number One on the magazine's list of Radio's Most Influential Women. Widely recognized as a leader and mentor, she continues to work with organizations that encourage and support the advancement of women in the radio industry.
Elizabeth Hines is the co-author of the bestselling biography, Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire, winner of the 2004 Non-Fiction Book Honor from the American Library Association. She has worked on the editorial staff at the Random House/ Ballantine Publishing Group, as an assistant producer of Harvard University's benefit performance of Eve Ensler's Obie Award winning play "The Vagina Monologues," and now serves as COO & Editor-in-Chief of Pace Media Group - home of the nation's number one online advertising publications.
Throughout her career Hines has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including a Richard L. Shinn Fellowship from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a Richter Fellowship from Yale University, and summer studies grant from the Johns Hopkins University Executive Leadership Alliance Program.
Ms. Hines graduated cum laude from Yale University and received an M.A. from the department of English and American Language and Literature at Harvard University. Currently at work on both a novel and her second non-fiction project, Hines is also a member of the Board of Trustees of The Hotchkiss School and sits on the board of LIFT, Legal Information for Families Today, which provides help for families trying to navigate the court system.
Marjorie Kalins has enjoyed a long career in television and film production as producer, executive producer, and sr. VP of production for companies that include HBO, Children's Television Workshop, and Telecom Entertainment. She started in educational films and spent a decade in commercial and TV film production at Benton & Bowles. She also was the Executive Producer of the public radio launch and of Satellite Sisters, now being successfully syndicated in commercial radio. She has won several Emmy's, a Peabody, and is also a past President of New York Women in Film & TV. Currently, she is the Executive VP of the Board of MCC Theater, an Off Broadway theater, and is a consultant to several TV projects in development.
Dina Kaplan is a partner and reporter for blip.tv, a website enabling people to share stories, news and videos on the Internet. Prior to founding this business, Dina was a TV reporter for 6 years. She freelanced for WNBC, the NBC affiliate in New York City, and spent two and a half years covering politics and investigative stories for WAVE3 News, the NBC affiliate in Louisville. Dina also reported for News12 Connecticut, News12 Long Island and News12 New Jersey. Dina won an Emmy this year for Spot News. She has also won Society of Professional Journalists Awards for Deadline Reporting, Service Reporting and Feature Reporting and Associated Press Awards for Breaking Spot News and Best Feature.
Before reporting, Dina spent four years at MTV News, producing stories about politics, technology and a range of musical acts. She also helped to coordinate MTV's Choose or Lose coverage of the 1996 Presidential Election. Before MTV, Dina worked at the White House, as Director of Research for the White House Counsel's Office and then as Special Assistant to the Director of Presidential Personnel. During college, Dina worked at Rock the Vote, helping to set up a volunteer network of voter registrars at colleges throughout the country. Dina graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in economics, philosophy, government and history. She speaks French and Italian. She organizes a Teddy Bear drive for sick children in New York with the Roosevelt Foundation, is on the New York Fundraising Board of the Newport Film Festival, is a Young Patron of Lincoln Center and a writing tutor for the Lincoln Foundation, which prepares inner-city high school students for college. Dina is a member of the NAACP, the Junior League and Jewish Federation Young Leadership. She is also a Wesleyan University Class Agent. Dina hosts monthly literary salons in New York.
Jennifer Lawson is general manager of Howard University Television, WHUT-TV, a post she has held since June 2004. For nine years prior to WHUT-TV, she headed an independent company that co-produced an eight-hour television series, AFRICA, in association with Thirteen, New York and National Geographic Television. This series, which portrays Africa through African eyes, was developed from ideas based on her experiences in Africa. The series premiered nationwide on PBS and internationally in over 130 countries to critical acclaim in September 2001. The series has a web site, www.pbs.org/africa. Lawson also produced another web site for PBS, The African American World, www.pbs.org/aaworld.
From 1989 to 1995, she was Executive Vice President, Programming and Promotion Services, PBS. She was public television's first chief programming executive and was responsible for the scheduling and promotional strategies that resulted in PBS's two most successful series, The Civil War and Baseball. She developed several highly regarded children's series including Barney & Friends, Lamb Chop's Play-Along, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? which increased children's viewing of public television over 100% in three seasons and resulted in the most watched week in PBS history in January 1993.
She was recognized as one of "the 101 Most Influential People in Entertainment" in 1990 by Entertainment Weekly and as one of the "Power 50," or fifty most influential women in entertainment, by The Hollywood Reporter in 1994. She attended Tuskegee University and holds a master of fine arts degree in film production from Columbia University.
Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues. Her second book, Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood (Viking, 2005) has generated a new conversation about the choices women make as they age. The paperback version will be published in January 2006. Her previous book, Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First was published in 2000. Her essays have appeared in national publications including Newsweek, TV Guide, The Nation and O: The Oprah Magazine. She is a contributing editor of More Magazine. Currently she is working on an oral history/ biography of the late Bella Abzug, to be published in 2007.
She was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review from 1989 to 1997, and before that, chief editor of Ms. Magazine, from it's founding in 1972 until 1988. She developed and produced the HBO Peabody-Award winning television documentary, She's Nobody's Baby: A History of American Women in the 20th Century and edited the book of the same name. She has appeared on numerous national television shows including, "Oprah" "Good Morning America" "Charlie Rose" and "Today"
She has taught journalism at several universities, most recently at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 1989-90, she was a Fellow at the Media Studies Center of the Freedom Forum. For five years she developed programs on family issues for the Chautauqua Institution, assembling such speakers as Bill Clinton, Fred Rogers and Gloria Steinem. She serves on the Board of The Transition Network and the Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication, and is a member of the AARP's Women's Leadership Circle. Her website is Suzannebraunlevine.com.
Ruth B. Mandel is director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, where she also holds a faculty appointment as Board of Governors Professor of Politics. From 1971 through 1994, Mandel built and directed Eagleton's Center for the American Woman and Politics (CAWP). Mandel writes and speaks widely about women and leadership, with particular emphasis on women as political candidates, women in office, women's political networks, and the "gender gap." She teaches courses on women and American politics and political leadership.
Since 1991, Mandel has held a presidential appointment on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was Vice Chairperson from 1993 until August 2005. She continues to serve on the Museum's executive committee, its Committee on Conscience, and its academic committee, and has chaired strategic planning and education committees. Mandel is a member of the board of the Charles H. Revson Foundation. Other service has included membership on the board of the National Council for Research on Women; the National Commission for the Renewal of American Democracy; and the Mercer County Commission on the Status of Women.
Mandel has received the Governor's Pride of New Jersey Award (1992); the Gloria Steinem Women of Vision Award from the Ms. Foundation (1996), the Twenty-First Century Leadership Award, from the National Women's Hall of Fame, the Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award from Women Executives in State Government (1998) and an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Chatham College (1998).
Carla Morganstern is an Emmy Award winning producer who began her career as a television news editor. Her network producing credits include all three network morning programs. For NBC's Today show, she produced and created a regularly scheduled segment with Gloria Steinem. At Entertainment Tonight she created the long running and highly profitable segment called the "Hart File". At CBS she secured the historic exclusive interview with Anita Hill for 60 Minutes and conceived and produced the first time two live television shows, the CBS Morning News simultaneously spoke with another live broadcast, The Home Shopping Network. Later, she set up the first news bureau in Modesto, CA for the EARLY SHOW that laid the groundwork for a successful series of reports on Chandra Levy. In the realm of "reality television", Carla was the producer on two highly rated "Survivor" specials, and in the world of producing celebrity interviews, she secured Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey among many other exclusives.
Ms. Morganstern served as a talent coordinator for President Clinton's first inauguration and was on Geraldine Ferraro's campaign staff during her historic 1984 run for vice president. She has been a consultant to many corporations including Lever Brothers and Details Magazine. Her internet start-up was featured at UCLA's Anderson School of Business and at Streaming Media Europe.
Susan Ness is the founding president and CEO of the Women's Radio Network, LLC, established to produce and syndicate female-oriented talk radio programming for radio broadcast stations, satellite radio, and the Internet. Commissioner Ness served on the Federal Communications Commission from May 1994 to May 2001, and, since then, has been the principal of Susan Ness Strategies. At the FCC, she played a leading role on spectrum policy issues, spurring the deployment of new technologies, including PCS, digital television, digital satellite radio, digital terrestrial radio, and the use of unlicensed wireless spectrum for broadband services. She was the FCC's senior representative to many international treaty conferences.
Prior to joining the FCC, she was vice president and group head of a national bank, providing financing to the communications industry. She also previously served as head of the Judicial Appointments Project of the National Women's Political Caucus and as Assistant Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing. She also was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication from 2001-2002, and served as Director of Information and Society at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
She presently serves on the board of directors of Adelphia Communications Corporation, LCC International (NASDAQ), and the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation. Some of the awards she has received include: the International Radio and Television Society Foundation Achievement Award; the Digital Television Pioneer Award; Electronic Media's "12 to Watch in 1997;" the Annenberg School for Communication's Edward L. Palmer Award; the 2002 National Association of Broadcasters' Engineering and Technology Achievement Award; American Women in Radio and Television's first "Advocates" Award; the District of Columbia AWRT Leadership Award; and the Wireless Women's Network's first Leadership Award. Rutgers University inducted her into its Hall of Distinguished Alumni and Douglass College named her a member of the Douglass Society.
When Amy Richards graduated from Barnard College in 1992, she did not know that her summer project, Freedom Summer '92, would be the beginning of her career as a feminist activist, writer, and organizer. For a decade, Amy led the young feminist organization Third Wave Foundation as it grew from a small grassroots organization into a national institution. Through this leadership, Amy became a spokesperson and leading voice for young feminist issues. Amy has appeared in a range of media venues including Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, Oprah, Talk of the Nation, New York One and CNN. In 1995, Who Cares magazine chose Amy as one of twenty-five Young Visionaries and Ms. magazine, which profiled her as one of the "21 for the 21st: Leaders for the Next Century." In 2003, Women's Enews, named her one of their "Leaders for the 21st Century," and in 2004, the American Association of University Women, chose her as a 2004 Woman of Distinction.
Amy's first book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, which she co-authored with Jennifer Baumgardner, was published in October 2000. Amy and Jennifer just published their second book, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism and Amy is currently at work on Opting In: The Case for Motherhood and Feminism. She also keeps busy with her online advice column, Ask Amy, sits on the boards of The Third Wave, Ms. Magazine, Choice USA, the Sadie Nash Leadership Program, feminist.com and Planned Parenthood of New York City.
Cynthia Samuels has written and produced highly popular content for some of America's most important TV and radio shows and websites. Most recently, she launched, staffed and maintained the Web site of the Center for American Progress, the new think tank for progressives. At iVillage, the leading Web site for women, her assignments included a long stint as Washington editor as well as design and supervision of the heavily trafficked Education Central, a sub site of Parent Soup. She represented iVillage in America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for families. A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels' other clients have included Universal New Media Group, Amazon.com, EXCITE, Barnes and Noble.com, Women.com, Jim Henson Interactive, and the Global Information Infrastructure Awards. In broadcast journalism, she was senior national editor of National Public Radio, political producer of NBC's "Today Show" where she worked for nine years, and executive producer of several youth news programs. Author of , she has published frequently in both the New York Times and Washington Post book reviews and many other publications.
Marlene Sanders is a three-time Emmy Award winning correspondent, producer, writer and former news executive, who broke barriers for women throughout her career. While a correspondent at ABC News, she was the first woman to anchor a prime time network newscast. In l966, she was the first TV newswoman to report from Vietnam and in l976, became the first woman news vice president at a network, as Vice President and Director of Documentaries. She is co-author with Marcia Rock of Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News, an updated version of which was published in l994 by the University of Illinois Press.
From l977 through 2000, she was in Residence at the Freedom Forum's Media Studies Center, where she organized and moderated panels on media issues. Sanders also narrates documentaries for HBO, public television, and others. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was a judge for the Dupont Awards, and in l999 she became a judge for the Peabody Awards.
Sanders, began her broadcasting career in l955. In l964, she joined ABC News as a correspondent, anchor, producer and news executive. In l978 she joined CBS News, working on documentaries for CBS Reports and on other reporting assignments. In l987 she hosted several public affairs programs at the local PBS station in New York, WNET. During her 4 years there she also taught part time as an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at both New York University and Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. She was the anchor of Profiles in Progress, 26 half hours about the developing world.
Cathy Saypol's public relations company, CSPR, Inc specializes in non-fiction publishing, documentary and news-consulting services. She was the Publicity Director of Ms. Magazine in the early eighties, and began freelancing as a publicist in 1984.
Her projects have included: The Superpower Myth, by Nancy Soderberg, (John Wiley & Sons), The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America, by Mark Green and Eric Alterman (Viking), Pinstripes and Pearls: The Women of the Harvard Law Class of '64 who Forged an Old-Girl Network and Paved the Way for Future Generations, by Judith Richards Hope (Scribner), Achievement Matters, by Hugh B. Price (Kensington Books), FIRE, by Sebastian Junger (WW Norton, HarperCollins, Inc), Nine and Counting: The Women of the US Senate by, Barbara Mikulski, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Patty Murray, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln. (William Morrow); The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger (WW Norton and HarperCollins); Edward M. Kennedy: The Biography by Adam Clymer (William Morrow), Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson (Houghton Mifflin), Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy by Eric Alterman (HarperCollins) and many others.
Melissa Silverstein is a freelance media consultant based in New York City. She is currently working on the start-up of the Women's Media Center and is coordinating a Forum for the New Israel Fund. Her expertise is in the area of popular culture and women and she has created targeted email outreach to help build word of mouth for books, films and other projects by and about women. Some of her recent project have included NY Liberty; CHOICE JAMS for Public Interest Media and NARAL; The War on Choice: The Right Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back by Gloria Feldt; Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can And Must Help Run The World by Marie Wilson. She also worked on the outreach campaign for the highly successful film Bend it Like Beckham and created the outreach campaign for the award winning film, The Hours.
She recently produced an evening of Jewish women's comedy, So Laugh A Little; and a documentary, Only Faster on legendary Jewish women comedians directed by Joan Micklin Silver, both for the Jewish Women's Archive. Other producing projects include an event for the Allan Guttmacher Institute and the Epic Awards for The White House Project. She was the founding director of The White House Project, and spent several years at the Ms. Foundation for Women starting as an assistant and leaving as chief of Staff.
Her writing has been published in Ms. Magazine; Swing; ivillage; Alternet, Oxygen, Pop & Politics among others.
Eugenia Woody is a journalist with more than twenty-five years of experience in broadcasting. From 1984 through 2004, she worked for NBC's flagship station in New York, WNBC. She began as a freelance news writer and left as executive editor. In the intervening years, she produced every major daily newscast and also served as news writer, broadcast co-producer and field producer (she was nominated for a local Emmy for coverage of South Africa's first democratic elections). Eugenia was also managing editor for Time-Warner's 24 hour news station, New York 1, and worked for Westinghouse and CBS owned stations as well.
On the print side, Eugenia worked for McGraw-Hill business publications and the Associated Press. She was a founding member of the New York chapter of the Association of Black Journalists and is a former member of the board of the New York chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Eugenia is a graduate of Rutgers University (BA in English) and of the University of Michigan, where she earned a masters degree in journalism.
