Biography

JENNIFER C. THOMAS is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at her esteemed alma mater, Howard University. She is the Journalism Sequence Coordinator for the Department of Media, Journalism and Film. A dedicated educator, she was named the 2020 Scripps Howard Foundation/ AEJMC Teacher of the Year. Her current and former students have won Hearst, Emmy and National Association of Black Journalists awards. She earned a Master of Arts degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A published author, she was a Fulbright Specialist Scholar with Rhodes University on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Her research interests include the dissection of current practices and pedagogies in journalism, the transition from professional to professor, and the complex facets of women, media and images.  A participant in the U.S. Department of State's Speaker Program, she has served as a featured speaker and presenter in Tanzania and Zanzibar during 2024 Media Freedom Week festivities with UNESCO and the United Nations. She convened with independent Russian journalists and Belarusian journalists in exile while in Lithuania and traveled throughout South Africa and I Nigeria where she served as keynote speaker for the country’s World Press Freedom observances. 

With more than 25 years of news industry experience, her motto is journalists are the defenders of democracy, freedom fighters of the First Amendment, and savvy and sophisticated storytellers. She most recently served as an Executive Producer with CNN, where she was honored with recognition from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences as the 9 a.m. newscast producer who helped lead CNN’s coverage during the September 11 Terror Attacks. She received Peabody Award recognition for her contribution to coverage of Hurricane Katrina and recognition from the duPont-Columbia Awards and the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). Throughout her career, she pioneered coverage of major events such as the Oklahoma City Bombing anniversary, Summer Olympic Games, Trayvon Martin verdict coverage, and presidential elections and inaugurations. She has also worked with major organizations, and amazing individuals as founder of MediaReady Consulting LLC, a media training, event management, and communications consulting service.

At Howard, Prof. Thomas is a member of the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion, an interdisciplinary team of scholars which conducts national polls on issues relevant to African American and Latinx communities. She produced live presidential election specials for PBS affiliate WHUT-TV, which broadcasts to 2.5 million viewers in the Washington DC metropolitan area, and supervised broadcast coverage of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. She also reported and produced an in-depth account of a day with the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, which captured migrants crossing the U.S. Mexico border. She is executive producer and professor of the award-winning senior capstone student newscast, NewsVision and is involved in numerous professional, civic, and service organizations including serving as a founding member of Cascade United Toastmasters and founding president of the Howard University Communications Alumni Association. She is advisor to the Howard University Association of Black Journalists, member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Society of Professional Journalists, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and The Links, Incorporated. An avid singer, she performed at the Atlanta Jazz Festival under her middle name, Camille.