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Biographies
Jeanne Mariani-Belding Prior to coming home to Honolulu, she worked at several newspapers in California, most recently at the San Jose Mercury News, where she held several senior editing roles including Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Senior Editor for Projects, and Race and Demographics Editor. She has received several national awards for her work, particularly in the field of race and demographics and diversity. Jeanne’s journalism career also includes numerous reporting and writing positions. She has covered a variety of beats, from education to politics to urban affairs and worked as a columnist covering international affairs. Jeanne also has led numerous journalism training sessions on editing, writing, diversity and newsroom management sponsored by numerous organizations including The Poynter Institute, Associated Press Managing Editors and American Society of Newspaper Editors, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University. She was a 2003 John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, where she studied international business, with an emphasis on emerging ethnic communities. As part of that program, she was selected to receive another fellowship to conduct research in Asia. Recently, Jeanne received the Asia Pacific Journalism Fellowship from the East-West Center. She also is national president of the Asian American Journalists Association, and has held numerous leadership positions within that organization as well a past UNITY programming co-chair. Reach her at president@aaja.org. Barbara Ciara Barbara started off the year 2000 completing her degree Summa Cum Laude, at Hampton University, winning an Emmy for her series "Guilty Til Proven Innocent", and receiving honors from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for her reports on race and ethnicity. Her co-honorees were CBS' Dan Rather and producers from 60 Minutes. When people refer to Barbara's world of experience, they are talking about her global travels to get the story in Cuba, Saudi Arabia during operation Desert Storm/Shield, Europe, Haiti, and Mexico. The highlights of her stateside coverage include campaign coverage, and investigation on Klan activity in Hampton Roads, segregation on city land at Portsmouth's Bide-A-Wee golf course, a health insurance investigation that resulted in coverage for a terminally ill man, and her one on one interview with Oprah Winfrey. Barbara Ciara has produced a number of works that bring history into perspective with today's world, such as her award winning documentary on "Massive Resistance" in Virginia with compelling interviews of the "Norfolk 17", the students who integrated Norfolk School in 1959. It's the kind of reporting that gets noticed. Barbara has received the 1997 Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association, 1997 Emmy nomination for "Operation Haiti" featuring children living in poverty on the island nation, 1995 Emmy nomination for the series "Letters from the Hood" a gripping story documenting the lives of children who live in violent urban areas. Ciara has also been honored with numerous Associated Press and United Press International awards dating back to 1986, as well as a dozen prestigious "Excel" awards from the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals. Her career began in Tucson, Arizona where she worked on the school newspaper at Pima Community College while also attending the University of Arizona. During her junior year she left college to take a full time position at KZAZ-TV in Tucson, Arizona in 1976. Over a five year period she worked in production as an audio director, technical director, and later in news as a photographer, reporter, assignment editor, producer, noon anchor, and finally news director. At the time, 1978, she was the youngest female and first African-American to achieve the management status of news director at a commercial television station in the southwest. Barbara is currently the Managing Editor at WTKR NewsChannel 3. She is working with the management team behind the scenes to enhance the local coverage of WTKR and help her new team live up to the promise of "Coverage You Can Count On." Barbara has worked at both the NBC and ABC affiliates in the Hampton Roads area, and she broke new ground in February 1997 when she took on the challenge of managing editor of L-N-C, a first of its kind partnership between commercial television, cable, and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. There she helped to develop a format, cross train print reporters, and launch the 24 hour NewsChannel partnership. She held that position for two years. From the fall of 1996 to the summer of 2000, Barbara also served as managing editor of the partnership between WVEC-TV and WHRO public television where her duties included producing and co-hosting the NewsMagazine "This Week In Hampton Roads." Barbara is also a believer in public service and has worked with a number of non-profit organizations. She served two terms on the board of the National Association of Black Journalists, and was executive producer of the NABJ's first nationally broadcast awards program on B-E-T originating in Nashville, Tennessee in 1996. Ciara has formally served on the board of the Virginia Marine Science Museum, and the advisory board for the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia Inc., the Virginia Stage Company, the American Red Cross, and the American Heart Association. Barbara also volunteers her time to the Tidewater AIDS Crisis Taskforce, Habitat for Humanity, Children's Hospital of the Kings Daughters, American Cancer Society, Candi House, the Urban League of Hampton Roads, the Joy Fund, and the Boys and Girls Clubs.
Derrick is also a Chips Quinn scholar and a McNair scholar. Before joining the Times, he was the Long Island Internet News Manager for Newsday.com in Melville, N.Y., where he covered breaking local news for the Web site and ran the home page. Henry also previously worked at The Associated Press as an Online Editor for national and international news in New York City, where he helped direct and write breaking news and multimedia coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks and the ensuing military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Henry also was a print and broadcast writer in Trenton, N.J., also for The Associated Press. He graduated from New Mexico State University in 1999. He is also a freelance photographer and recently completed an audio book project as the narrator of "Code Talker," a novel about the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II. Back to top | Back to board of directors Joanna Hernandez In 2003, Hernandez joined The New York Times Company as the director of the Feature Production Center for the Regional Media Group. As director, she works closely with the feature editors of the 14 New York Times-owned dailies in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. She also works with the editors at the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass., a newspaper also owned by The Times. Hernandez first entered journalism as a reporter at her neighborhood newspaper, the Clinton Community Press, in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. She landed her first job at a daily in Connecticut with the Bridgeport Post. She was also a staff reporter for the Bridgeport Light, the New Haven Independent and the New York Daily News. She switched career paths and became a copy editor through METPRO -- the Minority Editorial Training Program, which was run by the now defunct Times Mirror. As a copy editor, she's worked for Newsday, the San Francisco Examiner and The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. At The Star-Ledger, she was promoted to Assistant News Editor, Features Copy Chief, then became section editor of the weekend entertainment tab. She has attended various journalism workshops and seminars by the American Press Institute, the Associated Press Managing Editors and the Poynter Institute. She is a 1998 graduate of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education's Management Program. She’s also mentored middle-school students through The New York Times Mentoring program. Hernandez has been a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists since 1993. She is the current Region 2 director, representing members from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont. Back to top | Back to board of directors
Patty Loew Back to top | Back to board of directors
He joined the staff of the paper as a general assignment reporter in 1999. Before that, he spent six years as a reporter for the New York Daily News, covering his home town of the Bronx. He and a co-writer won third place in the Florida Press Club's contest for Crime Reporting in 1999, and Olmeda was part of teams that were nominated for Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. Olmeda joined the board of directors of NAHJ in 2000 as an at-large officer. A year later he was elected Region 4 director, where he organized two Spanish-language journalism conferences while serving as chairman of the association's issues committee. In this role he advocates for fair and accurate reporting of Latino communities and issues while upholding the highest standards of journalistic excellence. He became vice president of NAHJ in 2004 and president in 2006. He is also an adjunct professor of print journalism, general writing and grammar at Florida International University. Back to top | Back to board of directors Peter Ortiz I first proposed a diversity beat in 2003 while with The Arizona Republic newspaper. At this time I worked out of the paper¹s East Valley bureau and realized a need to cover the growing diversity in the area. My reporting and writing included coverage of immigrant communities, both Latino and Asian, and how they were redefining a mostly white community. I moved onto to a senior writer position with DiversityInc magazine in 2004 where I focused on diversity in corporate America. My coverage included interviews with corporate leaders and writing on corporate diversity trends as well as examining diversity¹s relevance in business and society. In February 2006 I traveled to Iowa to show the impact immigrants were having in the state's economy, but where they often remain invisible and marginalized. In May 2006 I traveled to Brazil where I reported and wrote on how racial discrimination continues to deny nearly half the population real opportunities and hurts Brazil's ability to compete globally. Currently I live in Jersey City, New Jersey, where I work as a freelance journalist. Back to top | Back to board of directors
Michaela Saunders For the past 18 months, Saunders has covered a controversial attempt by the Omaha Public Schools’ to take over parts of three neighboring school districts. She is also writing on the current effort to overhaul legislation passed last year to stop the dispute. That legislation was criticized for mandating segregation. The law would split the Omaha Public School District into three new districts: one mostly white, one largely black and one largely Latino. Before coming to the Omaha World-Herald, Saunders took part in the Poynter Summer Fellowship for Young Journalists and was a Kaiser Family Foundation Public Health Reporting intern at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Saunders holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. She is a member of the Native American Journalists Association. Back to top | Back to board of directors Robin Washington Back to top | Back to board of directors
John Yearwood Before joining the Star-Telegram in 1999, Yearwood spent two years in the Caribbean as founding publisher/editor of IBIS, a general lifestyle magazine. While in Trinidad as publisher of IBIS, he was elected to an at-large seat on the Executive Committee of the San Juan Business Owners Association. A year later, he was elected president of the association. Prior to IBIS, he spent ten years at The Dallas Morning News, where he reported from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Yearwood was also a newsman for the Associated Press in Connecticut and Oklahoma, a national correspondent for Focus magazine and the News/Public Affairs Director for WHUS Radio in Connecticut. Yearwood serves as treasurer of the National Association of Black Journalists. With almost 5,000 members, NABJ is the largest organization of journalists of color in the world. Before being elected to the NABJ executive committee, Yearwood was a two-term president of the Dallas/Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut. |
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Copyright © 1999 - 2009 • UNITY:Journalists of Color, Inc. • All Rights Reserved 7950 Jones Branch Drive • McLean, Va. 22107 | (703) 854-3585 | (703) 854-3586 fax | info@unityjournalists.org |
Jeanne Mariani-Belding is The Honolulu Advertiser’s editorial and opinion editor, where she is responsible for the overall daily operation and vision of the paper’s editorial and op-ed pages both online and in print.
Barbara Ciara has more than 20 years of experience as a broadcast journalist. She has won numerous community and professional honors for her work on camera and in the community. 
Derrick Henry is the Senior Producer for the Metro, City and Regionals sections at The New York Times.
Joanna Hernandez is Nuyorican, born and raised in Manhattan. A single parent for most of her adult life, her children are now in their 20s. She brought up daughter Sheena and son Gary while attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College, then New York University, through her fellowship at the Village Voice and internship at the New York Daily News, and throughout her career as a journalist.
Patty Loew, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Life Science Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a producer for WHA-TV (PBS) and co-host of In Wisconsin, a weekly news and public affairs program that airs statewide on Wisconsin Public Television. She is the author of Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal and Native People of Wisconsin, a middle school social studies text that is used by 15,000 Wisconsin school children. She has authored dozens of scholarly and general interest articles on Native topics. Her latest documentary, Way of the Warrior, explores the contributions of Native American veterans in the 20th century and will be shown nationally on PBS in fall 2007. Other award-winning television documentaries include No Word for Goodbye, Spring of Discontent, Throwaway Future, and Nation within a Nation, have appeared on commercial and public television stations throughout the country. Loew is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and a previously served as UNITY’s program committee member during the UNITY ’99 Convention.
Rafael Olmeda is an assistant city editor at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He is UNITY: Journalists of Color President.
Reporting and writing on diversity issues has been my focus over the last four years as a journalist. My total experience spans more than 12 years (10 years as a newspaper journalist and 2.5 years as a magazine/Internet reporter and writer). 
Michaela Saunders is an education reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, where she has worked since 2003.
Robin Washington grew up in Chicago in a family of black and Jewish civil rights activists. Participating in sit-ins and protests when he was three years old, today he recalls those events fondly as “family outings.”
John Yearwood, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, is World Editor of The Miami Herald, a position he has held for almost two years. Previously, Yearwood served as National/International Editor and Assistant City Editor for Government and Politics with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He is UNITY: Journalists of Color's 2007-2008 Treasurer and has served on the board for three years.