Biography

Yanick Rice Lamb’s mission is to give voice to the voiceless and share the gift of knowledge through the written word. An award-winning journalist, author and speaker, Dr. Rice Lamb shares her expertise at Howard University, where she is a professor and former chair of the Department of Media, Journalism and Film. She teaches reporting, editing, fact-checking, health and science writing, and media entrepreneurship. She is also adviser to 101 Magazine, TruthBeTold.news, Cover 2 Cover and the Howard University News Service.

Her research focuses on environmental health as well as journalistic issues, including education, social media and technology, media management and diversity. It has been featured in publications such as Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, the Howard Journal of Communications, Journal of Magazine and New Media Research and Asia-Pacific Media Educator.

Dr. Rice Lamb is also co-founder of the health website FierceforBlackWomen.com. Previously, she was editor-in-chief of Heart & Soul and BET Weekend, where her editorial vision led to the magazine becoming the second-largest publication for African Americans. Under her leadership, the magazine’s circulation increased nearly 40 percent, from 800,000 to 1.3 million in three years.

She spent a decade at the New York Times Company in various editing roles at the newspaper and at Child magazine. She has also worked at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Toledo Blade, Essence and Emerge.

Dr. Rice Lamb is completing a series on the psychological impact of COVID-19, which she began as a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow. The Center for Public Integrity and Belt Magazine co-published her series, “Unintended Consequences: The Rubber Industry’s Toxic Legacy in Akron,” with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. The series won a Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence from Morgan State University. It was praised by judges as “an exemplary piece of research about deindustrialization and its impact on a marginalized community.”

“The storytelling is compelling and comprehensive, engaging the reader all along the investigative road."

Describing the series as “powerful and effective,” the National Press Foundation named Dr. Rice Lamb as co-winner of the Thomas L. Stokes Award for Best Energy and Environment Reporting. The series also won an investigative journalism award from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists. The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) selected her to present the Upton Sinclair Memorial Lecture in May 2023 for the Outstanding Occupational Safety and Health News Story of the Year.

An avid reader, Dr. Rice Lamb is co-author of Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson, Rise & Fly: Tall Tales and Mostly True Rules of Bid Whist and The Spirit of African Design. She is a contributor to The Routledge Handbook of Magazine Research: The Future of the Magazine Form: Research Perspectives and Prospects, BET on Black: African-American Women Celebrate Fatherhood in the Age of Barack Obama, Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader, Haternation, Social Media: Pedagogy and Practice, Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother and Health & Healing for African-Americans. She is completing an environmental health book and her debut novel, Nursing Wounds about family secrets and the mysterious death of a hospital patient.

The daughter and sister of nurses, Dr. Rice Lamb has had a lifelong interest in health, which she has covered extensively over the years as a writer and editor. She earned a doctorate in medical sociology from Howard University, specializing in health, environmental issues and social inequality. A native of Akron, Ohio, she holds a bachelor’s in journalism from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Howard University. 

Dr. Rice Lamb, who has a son and grandson, loves working with young people and recently celebrated her 20th anniversary at the Mecca.