Georgetown Alumna Selected to Host Washington Week
Award-winning journalist Yamiche Alcindor (C’09) was recently chosen as the next moderator of the weekly news analysis series Washington Week on PBS. This selection is the next in a long line of notable achievements from the alumna.
A Record of Reporting
From Miami, FL, Alcindor majored in English and government and minored African American studies while at Georgetown. She was also actively involved in the Baker Scholars Program, where she helped to develop the program’s Baker Difference efforts that was committed to linking business opportunities and social impact.
Bernie Cook, associate dean in the College who worked closely with the Baker Scholars Program, says that her passion for journalism and reporting was evident while she was still an undergraduate.
“Yamiche always had a keen sense of the centrality of questions of justice,” Cook explains. “While studying English and government at Georgetown, Yamiche employed the tools of language and analysis to seek deeper understandings. She began to see journalism as a way to connect these threads, as a mode for seeking the truth that is a necessary precondition for justice.”
“We are enormously proud to count Yamiche among the alumni of Georgetown College,” states Doyle McManus, director of Georgetown’s Journalism Program. “She’s exactly the kind of journalist Georgetown strives to educate: brilliant, tireless and committed to shining light in dark places.”
While there wasn’t a formal Journalism Program at the time Alcindor was attending the College, she took several Journalism classes from the program’s founding director, Barbara Feinman Todd, and found a valuable mentor in longtime instructor Athelia Knight of The Washington Post. “I was impressed by her passion for journalism,” says Knight. “She was always looking for ways to gain hands-on experience while taking classes…. I think she had an internship every summer while she was at Georgetown.”
From the Hilltop to Covering the Hill
After graduating, Alcindor went on to receive a master’s degree in broadcast news and documentary filmmaking from New York University and has since worked for various news outlets including Newsday and USA Today.
Alcindor has been active in political journalism, covering the Trump administration and the campaigns of several presidential candidates for The New York Times including Bernie Sanders. Currently, she is reporting on the Biden administration.
The alumna is the ninth moderator of the Peabody Award-winning Washington Week. She also works as a White House correspondent for the PBS NewsHour and as a political contributor for NBC News and MSNBC.
In 2017, The Root listed Alcindor as one of the top 100 most influential African Americans aged 25-45. She was also chosen for the 2020 Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage from the White House Correspondents’ Association and as the 2020 recipient for the Gwen Ifill Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). McManus states that he and Alcindor first met thanks to Ifill, “I was lucky enough to get to know Yamiche when the late Gwen Ifill put us together as panelists on PBS’s Washington Week.”
Alcindor is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and was named the organization’s 2020 Journalist of the Year.
-by Shelby Roller (G’19)