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The 2024 Maynard 200 Fellowship is designed to sharpen skills, provide hands-on training as well as a one-to-one year-long mentorship, and build a community of peer support. This year’s curriculum has been updated with a hyperfocus on the critical role editors and managers play in today’s newsrooms. Hosted by the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at TCU, fellows benefit from two weeks of in-person training sessions and workshops led by industry leaders. This blog highlights just a few of the 2024 Maynard 200 Faculty who will be leading the fellows through their second week of training with presentations carefully crafted to build leadership skills and hone managerial instincts.

Ethical Editorial Decision-Making

Faculty: Maria Carrillo

Maria is a consultant and coach after spending 36 years in seven newsrooms. She was enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times and Houston Chronicle, and, before that, managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot. She has edited dozens of award-winning projects, frequently lectures on narrative journalism and co-hosts a podcast about craft called WriteLane.

She is a board member of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism as well as the National Press Photographers Association and a juror for the Hillman Prizes. Maria was born in Washington, D.C., two years after her parents left Cuba in exile. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Managing Up, Down and Across Generations

Faculty: P. Kim Bui

P. Kim Bui is a 2023-24 John S. Knight Journalism fellow. Recently, she was senior director of product and audience innovation at the Arizona Republic. A native Iowan, she’s focused her career on leading real-time news initiatives and creating new storytelling forms for digital, print and broadcast companies catering to local, national and global audiences.

Prior, she was editor-at-large for NowThis News and deputy managing editor for reported.ly, a distributed social journalism startup.

She was in the inaugural class of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership from City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She’s spoken on journalism and leadership worldwide and written about empathy in journalism for a number of research outlets. She writes a newsletter for emerging leaders: The Middles.

Breakout Workshop: Human Capital: Training & Retaining Talent

Faculty: Caroline Ceniza-Levine

Caroline Ceniza-Levine is a career expert, media personality, and founder of the Dream Career Club. Caroline is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.com, Top LinedIn Voice for Executive Coaching, Career Counseling, and Personal Development, and former career columnist for Money.com, Time.com, CNBC, and Portfolio. She has been a repeat guest expert on CBS, CNN, CNBC, and Fox Business and has been quoted in major media outlets, including BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Fortune, Inc, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal.

As an executive coach, Caroline has worked with professionals from Amazon, American Express, Condé Nast, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Tesla, and other leading firms. She designed and oversees the career program for the Columbia Business School Executive Program in Management and is the creator of the online courses “Behind the Scenes in the Hiring Process” and “Making FIRE Possible.”

Caroline is the author of “Jump Ship: 10 Steps to Starting a New Career.” A classically-trained pianist at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music, Caroline performed stand-up comedy in NYC clubs for 10 years and is currently a producer and writer with FBC Films. A native New Yorker, Caroline divides her time among Florida, New York, and Costa Rica and blogs about her journey to the land of Pura Vida on Costa Rica FIRE.

Keys to Effective Leadership

Faculty: Virgil Smith

Virgil L. Smith is the founder and Principal of the Smith Edwards Group, LLC, a consulting firm he established in 2015 after a distinguished 24-year career at the Gannett Company. Prior to his retirement, Smith held various leadership roles, including President and Publisher at the Stockton Record and Asheville Citizen-Times as well as a corporate HR executive responsible for talent development and diversity across broadcast, print, and digital operations. Before joining Gannett, Smith spent two decades at the McClatchy Company, where he held executive positions such as Human Resources Director, Director of Consumer Marketing, and Chief Labor Negotiator.

Throughout his career, Smith has helped numerous professionals achieve their career and life goals. In addition to his work as a consultant and career coach, Smith is currently the President of the Board of Trustees for the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. He has served as a Trustee since 2005.

Smith authored the book “The Keys for Effective Leadership” and has been recognized for his contributions by numerous professional and community organizations. His awards include the Ida B. Wells Award for Distinguished Leadership, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asheville Human Relations Council, and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy of Peace, Justice, and Community Award. Smith holds a Bachelor of Science and Master’s degree from the University of San Francisco and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of North Carolina Asheville. He resides in Atlanta with his wife, Joann Smith, PhD.

Strategizing Audience Growth Across Multiple Platforms & Special Projects

Faculty: Marian Chia-Ming Liu

For the past two decades, Marian Liu has worked across newspapers and digital platforms, diving into what resonates with readers in the local, national, and global news cycle. Her career has always been about reflecting the communities she represents - Asian, immigrant and female, covering everything from Korean Pop to health disparities across communities.

Currently, Marian Chia-Ming Liu is The Washington Post’s Projects Editor of Special Newsroom Initiatives and Partnerships, focused on developing innovative new ways to reach new readers. She’s managed several projects and section launches, including the new Style section covering news from the frontlines of culture; Well+Being, wellness stories on bodies of all shapes, sizes and colors, and the Pulitzer-winning series “The Attack: Before, During, and After.”

Before The Post, she was a writer, music critic, and editor at CNN in Hong Kong and several newspapers, including the Seattle Times, San Jose Mercury News, Source Magazine, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where she launched a hyperlocal entertainment site and app. Liu also directed the student multimedia convention projects for the Asian American Journalists Association and UNITY. She serves as National Vice PResident of Civic Engagement for AAJA and is developing an updated style guide for the AANHPI community.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Artificial Intelligence

Faculty: Ernesto Aguilar

Born in East Houston, Ernesto Aguilar’s life was transformed by public media. His career has traversed daily newspapers and alternative weeklies to public radio news and program director roles.

At KQED, he oversees radio broadcast content and DEI initiatives in the organization’s Content division. He is former co-chair of the KQED DEI Council.

In his spare time, he writes OIGO, a newsletter on public media and diverse audiences. Prior to KQED, Aguilar served stations as executive director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. He was also part of the founding committee of Public Media for All, an initiative aimed at organizing radio stations around actionable DEI outcomes.

A Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education Fellow, Sulzberger Executive LEadership Fellow, and Public Media CEO/COO Bootcamp graduate, Aguilar has a B.A. in journalism, with minors in sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Houston.

Keys to the Executive Office

Faculty: Katrice Hardy

Katrice is vice president and executive editor of The Dallas Morning News. Previously, she was executive editor of The Indianapolis Star and Midwest regional editor for USA Today Network. When Katrice joined the network in 2016, she was the executive editor of The Greenville News and then took on responsibilities as the South regional editor overseeing news organizations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia.

Previously, she had worked for 20 years at The Virginian-Pilot where she started as an intern and left as managing editor. Her IndyStar newsroom and its reporting partners The Marshall Project, AL.com, and Invisible Institute were awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for “Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons,” and the newsrooms where she has led have won multiple IRE and Editor and Publisher awards, and myriad state honors as well. She is a board member of the Marshall Project, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Dallas Assembly and the International Women’s Forum.

Katrice believes strongly that a news organization’s role is to shine light on wonderful people and organizations making a difference in local communities and to uncover the problems, ills, misuses and abuses to help make positive change.

Difficult Conversations With Role Play

Faculty: Sandra Clark

Sandra Clark, featured in Editor and Publisher’s “15 Over 50” Class of 2024, is CEO of StoryCorps and is a leading voice in journalism and beyond, challenging norms and practices that create barriers to building trust and meaningful, sustainable connections with communities. At StoryCorps, she leads the award-winning organization’s mission to help us believe in each other by recording and sharing stories from everyday people that illuminate the humanity and possibility in us all.

Prior to joining StoryCorps, Clark was Vice President for News and Civic Dialogue at WHYY in Philadelphia. Her innovative approaches to collaborating with grassroots information providers garnered national recognition. Previously, Clark served as Managing Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, leading the paper to a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is a longtime visiting coach and mentor for the Maynard Institute.

Faculty: Andy Alford

Andy Alford is The Texas Tribune’s director of recruitment, training and career development. She also manages the Tribune’s fellowship program, which employs student fellows to work in all areas of the organization, including on teams in the newsroom, as well as the events, product development, and marketing and communication teams.

Andy came to the Tribune in 2022 after a long stretch at the Austin American-Statesman, where she rose from reporter to managing editor. Alford had a nearly 19-year tenure at the Statesman where she had various roles, including local editor, data journalist on the investigative team and community affairs reporter.

Convening in-person on July 15

The Maynard 200 Fellowship program is made possible thanks to all members of the 2024 faculty and mentors and the second training week kicks off on July 15.

Our university host partners at TCU’s Bob Schieffer College of Communication have been instrumental in welcoming the Maynard 200 Fellowship, including Chair of the Journalism Department, Dr. Uche Onyebadi, and long-standing TCU faculty member, Associate Professor of Professional Practice and Director of Student Media Journalism, Jean Marie Brown has also been instrumental in welcoming the Maynard 200 Fellowship. The reception on July 18 will include an address by the Dean of TCU’s Bob Schieffer College of Communication, Dr. Kristie Bunton.

Also rejoining the fellows for week two of their Maynard 200 training are Executive-in-Residence Felecia Henderson and faculty members John X. Miller, Tom Huang, and Dickson Louie.

Read the bios for all week 2 faculty (PDF).

About the Maynard Institute

For more than 45 years, the Maynard Institute has fought to push back against the systemic lack of diversity in the news industry through training, collaborations and convenings. Founded by Robert C. Maynard, the Institute promotes diversity and antiracism in the news media through improved coverage, hiring and business practices. We are creating better representation in America’s newsrooms through our Maynard 200 fellowship program, which gives media professionals of color the tools to become skilled storytellers, empowered executives and inspired media entrepreneurs.

About the Maynard 200 Fellowship

Maynard 200 is the cornerstone program advancing the Maynard Institute’s efforts to expand the diversity pipeline in news media and dismantle structural racism in its newsrooms. Since 2018, the Maynard Institute has trained media leaders, storytellers, editors, managers and entrepreneurs through the fellowship program. Maynard 200 is designed to sharpen skills, provide hands-on training as well as a one-to-one year-long mentorship, and build a community of peer support for diverse journalists. In 2024, the program returns with two weeks of in-person training rounds — specifically designed to support the success of newsroom editors and managers. Hosted by the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, the program will convene in March and July of 2024.

Maynard 200 is made possible thanks to the support of our generous funders Craig Newmark Philanthropies, The Hearthland Foundation and McClatchy.

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