--Gwen Ifill, Journalist, (1955-2016)
Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides Leadership Tuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. Yesterday this world lost a truly great American hero and journalist. Gwen Ifill, a veteran American journalist, succumbed to cancer on November 14, 2016. She was a shero. Not because she made news headlines as a celebrity or entertainer, but because she became what she needed to see as a child. She became a role model of what it looks like to be an African American woman journalist reporting the news on television.
We watched her many interviews with presidents, vice presidents, political candidates, members of Congress and her roundtable discussions, and we had confidence that she was not pandering to the interviewee but getting the information that we needed to know to make decisions about who we would vote for or what issues we needed to know about. You would look up and see her reporting a story or at the News Hour Desk with Judy Woodruff at the political conventions, and you knew that what you were going to hear about was the real issues that were important to everyday Americans.
We will miss seeing her, but her legacy will remain forever. Thank you Ms. Ifill for becoming the career model you did not have as a child. You will always be a standard of excellence for the many girls and people of color who will watch one of your interviews and say, ‘I want to be her’.
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