Michele L. Norris

Michele L. Norris is a contributing columnist and consultant for Post Opinions at the Washington Post and founding director of The Race Card Project. She worked as a reporter at the Post from 1988 to 1993, covering education, politics, the AIDS crisis and the impact of the region’s drug trade. She moved from the Post to ABC News, where she was part of a team that won an Emmy and a Peabody for her work on 9/11 and its aftermath. As a correspondent in the ABC Washington bureau, Norris covered presidential campaigns and government policy before returning to the education beat. In 2002, she joined National Public Radio, where she stayed for 13 years and, among other things, became the first African American female host of “All Things Considered.” In the fall of 2010, Norris founded the Race Card Project, inviting people from all over the world to distill their experiences and thoughts about race into six words. The Race Card Project won a Peabody Award in 2014 for excellence in electronic communication for the website and an NPR series of special reports based on stories from the archive. She served as executive director of The Bridge, the Aspen Institute’s program on race, cultural identity, connectivity, and inclusion that oversaw The Race Card Project.