Welcome, Maudlyne Ihejirika!
We’re so excited to welcome Maudlyne Ihejirika to our Field Foundation team. Maudlyne, who will manage our Media & Storytelling portfolio, spent 29 years with the Chicago Sun-Times, where she was an award-winning reporter and columnist. She is responsible for supporting the foundation’s work in seeking to change how news production and storytelling reflect Chicago—and in creating a more equitable, connected, and inclusive local media ecosystem in which the stories of all Chicagoans are told accurately, fairly, authoritatively, and contextually.
Learn more about Maudlyne below. She brings deep knowledge and experience to her new role, and we look forward to our work together!
Meet Maudlyne
Prior to joining Field, in her career at Chicago Sun-Times, Maudlyne served as assistant city editor, and covered beats from crime and the inner city to housing and education, politics, and philanthropy. From 2016 until 2022, when she left the newspaper to cover racial equity issues for myriad newspapers, Maudlyne wrote “Chicago Chronicles”—long-form columns of diverse and untold narratives focusing on racial, social, and economic justice issues impacting Black and Brown communities.
As weekend city editor in 1977, she left to work for Gov. Jim Edgar as press secretary for the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services. In 1999, she left state government to launch the Ihejirika Media & Communications Group, managing media operations for members of the U.S. Congress, Illinois Legislature, and City Council. It was during that time she managed media strategy for the successful re-election bid of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in the heated race against a then-fledgling Illinois politician, Barack Obama.
Returning to the Sun-Times in 2003, her numerous awards include the prestigious Studs Terkel Award, and top national and local honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Association of Black Journalists, Associated Press, and Illinois Press Association. Her myriad civic awards range from the Chicago Defender “Woman of Excellence” and African Festival of the Arts’ “Community Servant” awards; to the Chicago Coalition of African American Leaders’ “Vernon C. Jarrett Par Excellence in Journalism Award,” and the Big 10 BANboree’s 2022 Black Alumni of the Year. She was ranked on the 2019 annual list of “The 25 Most Powerful Women In Chicago Journalism.”
Maudlyne holds an M.S.J. from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Iowa. She is also a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. A highly sought-after speaker, including several university commencement speeches, she holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Saint Xavier University. In 2020, Ihejirika was inducted into the Hall of Achievement at her alma mater, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. In 2018, she was similarly inducted into the Halls of Fame at her undergraduate alma mater, the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Hall of Fame at Downers Grove South High School. She is a longtime member of the Professional Advisory Board of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa, and of the prestigious Council of 100 at Northwestern University.
Maudlyne is Immediate Past President of both the Chicago Journalists Association and the National Association of Black Journalists Chicago Chapter. She is also the author of “Escape From Nigeria: A Memoir of Faith, Love and War” (Africa World Press, 2016)—a riveting tale of her family’s survival of the brutal Nigerian-Biafran War and miracles that brought them to the US as refugees.
For many years a frequent guest contributor on PBS-TV’s “Chicago Tonight: Week In Review” and FOX-32’s “Good Day Chicago,” Maudlyne has appeared as a political analyst on outlets from CNN to MSNBC, TV One, ABC and CBS networks, as well as on NPR, WBEZ, WVON and V103 radio.
More on her Sun-Times work here
More on Ihejirika here
Follow her on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: @Maudlynei