Virgil L. Smith is the Principal Consultant of the Smith Edwards Group, LLC. Smith started the consulting firm in October 2015 after retiring from the Gannett Company, where he worked for 24 years as a president and publisher and corporate HR executive focused on talent development, talent acquisition, talent management and diversity. Prior to joining Gannett, Smith spent 20 years with the McClatchy Company, where he held a number of executive positions. He counts hundreds of professionals he has assisted with managing and achieving their career and life goals.

He continues to be involved with diversity and leadership issues serving on the FOX News Workplace Professionalism and Inclusion Council and is a consultant and career coach for the Asian American Journalists Association Executive Leadership Program, and he serves as Executive in Residence for the Maynard 200 Advanced Leadership Program. He also serves on the journalism advisory boards for Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communications at Florida International University, the Mayborn School of Journalism, at the University of North Texas and the Global School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University.

Smith earned his Bachelor of Science and Master’s degree from the University of San Francisco and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Asheville.

Debra Adams Simmons, executive editor for culture at National Geographic Magazine, was a 2016 fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She was managing editor and editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland for seven years before joining the newspaper’s parent company, Advance Local, as a vice president in 2014. There she worked to strengthen content across its 30 newspapers and websites, identified and developed news talent and worked on content initiatives for diverse audiences. 

A 30-year news veteran, Simmons has extensive reporting, editing and senior news management experience. She was editor of the Akron Beacon Journal for four years and an editor and reporter at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, the Detroit Free Press, the Hartford Courant and the Syracuse Herald-Journal. 

She was president of the Associated Press Media Editors in 2014, recently completed a term on the board of the International Women’s Media Foundation. She is the board chair of the Maynard Institute and is on the board of the American Society of News Editors. She has a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University’s College of Arts & Sciences and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Kevin Merida is the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest major metro newspapers in the country. After a six-month search, The Los Angeles Times selected Merida to strengthen the publication’s news coverage and digital offerings. The current owners of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Patrick and Michele Soon-Shiong, indicated earlier this year that stronger coverage of “Black, Latino, Asian and underrepresented communities” is a priority for the publication.

Prior to his role at the Los Angeles Times, Merida was senior vice president at ESPN and editor in chief of The Undefeated, the premier platform exploring the intersections of race, sports and culture. He also oversaw investigative and news enterprise journalism at ESPN, and formerly supervised the television shows, Outside the Lines and E:60. Since its launch in May 2016, The Undefeated has won numerous awards for its content, produced six television specials, five music videos, two children’s books, and convened more than 10 townhalls and other live forums on topics ranging from the achievements of black female athletes to social activism in sports.

Before joining ESPN in November 2015, Merida spent 22 years at The Washington Post as a congressional correspondent, national political reporter, longform feature writer, magazine columnist and senior editor in several roles. He led the national staff for four years during the Obama presidency, and was managing editor overseeing news and features coverage for three years. During his stint as managing editor, The Post won four Pulitzer Prizes and embarked on a digital transformation that made it one of the fastest growing news organizations in the country.

Merida is the co-author of “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” and “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs.” He also is the editor of “Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril,” an anthology based on an award-winning Washington Post series.

Merida serves on the boards of Boston University, WBUR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and the Wallace House at the University of Michigan.

He lives in Los Angeles, with his wife, the writer Donna Britt, and youngest son.

Susan Leath directs the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. She’s responsible for the strategic, financial and operational success of the Center. The Center supports existing and start-up news organizations through its dissemination of applied research and the development of digital tools and solutions. The economic and business research of UNC’s Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics and the Knight Chair in Digital Advertising and Marketing. In addition, it supports professors and students associated with the Reese News Lab, which designs, tests and adapts digital tools for use in small and mid-sized newsrooms.

Leath is the former regional president of the USA Today Networks media groups in Delaware and Maryland where she directed the strategic, financial and operational success of the network and its associated products, successfully repositioning the brand as multimedia platform in the minds of consumers and business leaders. Leath led and developed a 400-person team, built strategic partnerships that improved marketplace positioning and established sustainable value propositions managing/optimizing core and new growth revenue streams.

She started a management consulting firm, Leath Consultant Group, LLC, to help organizations operate more effectively, identify and develop new revenue streams, establish and activate a strong communication strategy, and build relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

Leath is an accomplished leader recognized for excellent strategic and operational skills with a passion for connecting people and strengthening communities. Her career spans over two decades in the media industry.

Leath is a lecturer at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media in Chapel Hill, N.C. She is a former lecturer at the School of Mass Communications at NC Central University in Durham, N.C., specializing in media ethics.

She is a Maynard 200 Executive Coach and Mentor. She serves on the Board of Directors of Carolina Public Press and Public Media NC (UNC-TV) Black Issues Forum Advisory Council. Her prior roles include almost five years as the president and publisher of the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania. She climbed through the advertising ranks at newspapers owned by The New York Times in Florida and Alabama, including Florida’s largest newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times.

Susan is a graduate of the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s in advertising with a concentration in marketing.

Kim Bardakian is the Director of Media Relations for the Kapor Center, a non-profit which aims to make the technology ecosystem and entrepreneurship more diverse and inclusive. She also works with the Venture Capital arm, Kapor Capital, an early, seed-stage impact investing firm.

Prior to the Kapor Center, Kim served as the VP of PR and Community Relations for Visit Oakland, where she worked with local, national and international press to showcase all the positive things going on in “The Town.”

She currently serves as an active member with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), PRSA (San Francisco Chapter) and involved in a variety of other PR and media organizations. A native New Yorker, Kim holds both a Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She proudly resides in Oakland where she is an avid tennis player and can be seen out and about dining at many of the great Oakland restaurants.

Sarah Allen has 20 years of experience working in various areas of media; including video production, online media and writing. Shortly after graduating college, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Broadcast media and was hired as one of the first employees for a start-up network called the Tennis Channel; which has since been on the air for 15 years. She also got on the ground floor of the now defunct, Current TV, founded by former Vice President, Al Gore. She eventually transitioned from broadcast to print and online media. 

She has a Bachelor’s degree in radio & TV from San Francisco State University, is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and has served as a board member for the Bay Area Black Journalists Association since January, 2011. Sarah loves connecting people through community organizing and event planning. She recently hosted a panel discussion in Miami at the National Association of Black Journalists convention with Ice Cube and the BIG3 on Diversity in Sports.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the Washington Post’s former reporter, editor and columnist, in 1961, historically became The Post’s first black female reporter. During her distinguished career, spanning more than five decades, she has become a revered icon in American journalism, a fierce advocate for women’s rights, a fervent civil rights activist and renowned author. “Journalism took me places that I would not normally go,” Gilliam says.

Most recently, in January 2019, Gilliam published her riveting memoir, “Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More like America.” Spurred by numerous public speaking and book-signing engagements and bicoastal news media interviews, including one on The Daily show with Trevor Noah, Gilliam’s autobiography has become a hot-selling item. The book’s first printing nearly sold out within three months, as readers devoured Gilliam’s historic, poignant and first-hand accounts of the evolution of journalism, social and political discourse – and civil rights in America.

Gilliam began her more distinguished journalistic career in the segregated South, as a reporter for the Memphis Tri-State Defender, a black-owned newspaper. There, she covered major civil rights events, including the Little Rock Nine, the federally enforced integration of Arkansas’ public schools. In 1961, Gilliam became The Post’s first female black reporter. One of her early assignments was covering James Meredith’s integration of Ole Miss. At that time, Mississippi was infamously known in American black circles as “The Land of Black Death.” On this assignment, skirting active Ku Klux Klan members, Gilliam literally “slept with the dead,” catching a few hours of nightly rest in a black funeral parlor, later filing her story entitled: “Mississippi Mood: Hope and Fear.”

She worked for The Post for more than 30 years, moving from reporter to editor – and then attaining pundit status as a columnist, covering politics, education and race relations. She also served as president of the National Association of Black Journalists and founding director of the Young Journalists Development Project. At The Post, and via those organizations, she championed the cause, preparation and integration of female reporters into mainstream America’s news media.

In the mid-60’s, Gilliam left The Post to devote more time to her children, but kept her hand in journalism as a part-time reporter for WTTG TV’s Panorama program in Washington, D.C., while writing free-lance magazine articles. She returned to The Post in 1972, as its Style section assistant editor, recasting that section from a mere lens into contemporary women’s fashion, into wider, and much-emulated discourse (among U.S. newspapers) reflecting women’s interests and issues.

Gilliam moved from editor to columnist, in 1979, at The Post, opining about education, politics, race, sometimes sharing anecdotes gleaned from her personal experiences. She left that position in 1998 to found and develop the Young Journalists Development Program, The Post’s long-term initiative to educate, cultivate and hire aspiring young minority journalists. She retired from The Post in June 2003 and for the following two years served as Jet Magazine’s associate editor.

In addition to writing her latest book, Gilliam has authored “Paul Robeson, All American,” and contributed to “The Edge of Change: Women in the 21st Century Press: 2009.” Gilliam earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., and her master’s degree at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. 

In 1979, she won Columbia’s School’s Journalism Alumni of the Year Award, and in 1991, she was honored as a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia, where she studied racial diversity in American media. In 1996, she became a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University.

Gilliam was born in Memphis, Tenn., and grew up in Louisville, Ky. She was married to the renowned abstract artist Sam Gilliam, with whom she has three daughters and three grandchildren. She is a member of the Metropolitan A.M.E Church in Washington, D.C., where she serves on its Steward Board and chairs its Commission on Public Relations.

Here are some thoughts Gilliam’s contemporaries have shared about her and her latest work:

Pulitzer Prize-Winning & Former Washington Post Reporter Carl Bernstein: “Dorothy’s inspirational life story is the journey of a daughter of the South who became a pioneering black woman journalist, an influential voice in the pages of The Washington Post, a national leader of the movement to foster diversity in the news media, and a dedicated mentor to countless aspiring young journalists. And, it (her latest book) is a welcome gift for colleagues and readers who have benefited from her work and presence in our lives.”

Former Washington Post Publisher Don Graham: Dorothy is a great reporter, a pioneer for all women in the news business, and African American women particularly. Her story is about a time in American journalism where courage and brilliance were called for in the white-male bastions that were American newsrooms. It’s (her latest book) a story that has been waiting a long time to be told.”

Gloria Steinem, Feminist, Writer, Editor, Lecturer and Co-Creator of New York and Ms. magazines: Dorothy Gilliam is that most rare of revolutionaries, one who not only climbs the barricades, but let’s down a ladder to help others up, too.”

Born in Memphis, Tenn., Gilliam grew up in Louisville, Ky. and graduated cum laude from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. with a B.A. in Journalism. She earned her master’s degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and was honored as a recipient of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Alumni of the Year Award in 1979. In 1991, she was a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University, studying racial diversity in the American media. In the fall of 1996, she was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 

Among the honors she has received are Lifetime Achievement Awards of the Washington Press Club Foundation in 2010, induction into the Society of Professional Journalists’ Hall of Fame in 2002 by the Washington, D.C. Chapter, induction into the NABJ Hall of Fame in 1992; winner of the University of Missouri Honor Medal in Journalism in 1998; the Unity Award in Journalism from Lincoln (Mo.) University; and the Ann O’Hare McCormick Award from the New York Newspaper Women’s Club while a student at Columbia.

Bill Celis is an associate professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles. As a former associate director and associate dean at the school, he chaired the school’s diversity committee that led to USC Annenberg winning the 2012 Diversity and Equity Award from the Association of Educators of Journalism and Mass Communication; in 2018, for his work in diversity, inclusion and mentoring, he was awarded the Barry Bingham Fellowship from the American Society of News Editors. As an administrator, he led curriculum and assessment reforms at USC Annenberg’s journalism undergraduate and graduate programs, building a paid internship program for the graduate program. 

Celis is a former national correspondent for The New York Times and a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He serves on the executive committee as secretary of the Institute, where he previously served as a member of the editing program advisory committee in 1995-1997 and the strategic planning committee 2017-2018. Celis earned his master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and his bachelor’s degree in English and journalism from Howard Payne University in his native Texas.

Christian (Chris) Hendricks has been President for the Local Media Consortium (LMC) since 2018. He joined the LMC after a 25-year career at McClatchy where he led its digital efforts for more than two decades. During his McClatchy stint, Hendricks also served on the boards of Careerbuilder, Cars.com, and Apartments.com. 

Hendricks is also Managing Partner for Extol Digital, a business consultancy focused on helping media and media-related companies with strategy, go-to-market planning, and operations. In addition to the previously mentioned roles, he serves on the board of directors for Moonlighting, Recruitology and ITEGA. He is also a venture partner for Impact VC, a west-coast venture capital firm.

John X. Miller is the former Senior Editor for Sports, Business and Features at The Dallas Morning News. Previously, he was senior editor for news, commentary and HBCUs for Andscape (formerly known as The Undefeated), ESPN’s website that reports on the intersection of race, sports and culture.

Miller was managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal newspaper for 21/2 years before moving to ESPN in 2016. He is a native of Winston-Salem and was the first African-American managing editor of the Journal.

He is a veteran journalist of more than four decades, having been a top editor at several newspapers across the country including the Detroit Free Press, USA Today, the Charlotte Observer, Winston-Salem Journal and Myrtle Beach Sun News. He was also the top editor at the Hickory (NC) Daily Record and Lansdale (PA) Reporter.

Significantly, he was a founding staffer of USA Today in 1982 and an original staff member of The Undefeated in 2016, making his decades-long career truly unique.

He has led award-winning newsrooms in Winston-Salem, Hickory, Myrtle Beach and Lansdale, capturing awards for public service, general excellence, reporting, editorial writing, multimedia journalism, online breaking news, diversity, newspaper design and outstanding cooperation as an Associated Press member.

He currently serves as board chair for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, and has served on various ASNE and APME boards and committees over the years. He has been a Pulitzer Prize Juror, a facilitator at the American Press Institute and was the first Donald W. Reynolds Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at Washington and Lee University in 2005. He is a HistoryMaker, a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, the national leadership honor society, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc.

From 1999 to 2008, he was at the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit Media Partnership, first as the Free Press’ Public Editor, then as the DMP’s Director of Community Affairs. His primary responsibilities as Public Editor were writing corrections, handling accuracy, credibility, readership and ethical issues for the newspaper, and he also wrote a column in an ombudsman role.

He is a 1977 graduate of Washington and Lee University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, where he serves on the Advisory Board for the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.