Nikole Hannah-Jones, Howard University

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones serves as the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy. Hannah-Jones spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, including as a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. Her reporting earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, and three National Magazine Awards. She co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, and, in 2022, she opened the 1619 Freedom School, a free afterschool literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.