Ericka Blount Danois "I wish I would have known more people. I would have loved them all." -- Toni Morrison's character Pilate in Song of Solomon Location: Baltimore, Maryland Website: www.erickablount.com

Biography:
In 2002, Ericka Blount Danois was nursing a newborn daughter, working as a staff writer at The City Paper, and had gone through several career highs a 2-hour exclusive interview with Cuba s President Fidel Castro; and lows watching as city marshals shut down the black-owned newspaper where she worked as a staff writer for two years. She was at a crossroads. She had taken time off from Columbia University s Graduate School of Journalism to work and take care of her children (a 2-year-old and a newborn) and was being told by the school that she would have to return by the fall or she would have to begin her course load from scratch.

There were many obstacles. She worked full-time. Columbia was in New York and she lived in Baltimore. She had two young children. Her husband traveled for four days at a time for his job at US Airways. A lay-off from her job provided her with a mixed blessing and the answer to her conundrum. She finished her final two courses at Columbia, traveling back and forth to New York by airplane with free flight benefits weekly. In 2004, she graduated, walking across the stage with her two daughters in tow.

Danois has worked as a freelance and staff writer and managing editor for a variety of publications, including: The Philadelphia Tribune, ESPN, the magazine, Sports Illustrated, Vibe, The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, Uptown magazine, Washington City Paper, The Washington Post, JazzTimes, One World, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Crisis, The Source, Rap Pages, Heart and Soul, and Wax Poetics, among others. She has interviewed cultural giants like Quincy Jones, Rakim, Nas, LL Cool J, Olu Dara, Kenny Gamble, Jackie McLean, Horace Silver, Fidel Castro, Caron Butler, John Thompson, Andy Rooney, Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb, and Patrick Ewing, among others. She is currently working on a book a dual biography on father/son musicians, continues to work as a freelance writer and managing editor for a variety of magazines, online publications, and newspapers, and is a professor in the Communications Department at Morgan State University. She has delivered speeches about her career and done one-on-one mentoring for students around the DC metropolitan area.

It all sounds good on paper, but there were many ditches and bumps along the road. In 1994, Danois was fresh out of college working for The City Sun, a black-owned and highly respected newspaper, based in Brooklyn, NY. Within those two years there were times where staffers went a whole month without being paid as the paper struggled, according to the publisher because advertisers weren't supportive of the strong political editorials. When payday approached, the publisher would call each employee individually into his office and have a show of taking a few hundred dollar bills out of his wallet: "To hold you over until the paycheck arrived." Danois lost a lot of weight. She went under a lot of NYC subway turnstiles (because she wasn't tall enough to jump over them). She took penny rolls to the bank. Many of the reporters on staff had left mainstream publications: The New York Times and Daily News, for example, because they felt their stories, particularly stories about the black community, weren't getting covered there. They were committed to the mission of the paper so they stayed. Then one day Danois got off the elevator at the paper's 44 Court Street address in downtown Brooklyn and was met by the city marshals. As she went to walk past them they said, "You can't go in there," as they fumbled with a bar and padlock. She asked, "Can I at least get my stuff?" They looked at her. "A computer?" Nothing. "My paycheck?" That's when they laughed.

Danois speaks on more than just her successes and failures as it relates to her career, she speaks on perseverance in the face of adversity, being a stay-at-home mom and giving up her career, balancing work and family, dealing with racism and sexism in the workplace, transcending her own circumstances growing up in the 'hood, and her love of the written and spoken word.

Availability:
Available as a speaker or consultant