Thank you NABJ for recognizing my reporting on the people of my community. I work so others know their stories and voices are relevant, their  ideas and contributions are powerful and their pain is real.    Elaine Houston, reporter WNYT, Albany, NY

OUR STORY

I was a reporter who'd taken a new job at a television station when I felt the sting of corporate America doing what it does so often with women of color and that is try and marginalize me. It started very early; during probation that they began to insinuate I wasn't good enough. While that was management's belief, it wasn't mine. I knew I had the education, experience, solid reporting skills, the ability to project my voice in a professional public speaking manner and I knew how to be personable while giving the news.

 However, I had to work harder than I'd ever worked in my life to fight against the box that my bosses put me in through their implicit bias.

  It was because of that I decided that I had to tell the stories of women. I had to present a new perspective about women of color. I did that through my first book, THE FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN WOMEN. It's a book of letters from women to women on perseverance. I next traveled to Africa and spoke to women in three countries on the challenges they faced and produced the documentary, TOUCH A WOMAN, TOUCH A ROCK.  I returned home and started a new television series for women called TODAY'S WOMEN.  All of these projects led me to start this website, www.SHEspeaks2me.com where I do stories on women of color from around the world.  In 2017, I began holding an annual summit for women to help them transform themselves in the person God created them to be. That is what got us here, but what keeps us going is seeing women succeed.  Elaine Houston