Draft:Ebony Reed

Ebony Reed is an American journalist, educator and author. Chief Strategy Officer for The Marshall Project since 2021, she is an editorial leader and news strategist with extensive knowledge and experience in local, regional, and national journalism, business operations, communications and diversity-related projects.

Early life and education
Ebony received her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 2000. In 2004 she became the first graduate of the University of Missouri's master’s in media management.

Career
Reed began her career as a reporter at The Plain Dealer, covering Cleveland public schools and documenting public education’s inequities. She has reported on public school systems, police agencies, and city governments. She led the metro desk at The Detroit News during the 2008 housing crisis.

Reed has been featured and part of key strategies at global news outlets, including the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal. At the Wall Street Journal, she was the New Audiences and Community Chief, overseeing four teams of journalists, engineers, designers, and audience experts.

In January 2022, Reed joined The Marshall Project as its first-ever Chief Strategy Officer, leading strategy across the organization, managing communications, marketing and its local markets growth strategy.

Teaching
Reed has taught at universities and colleges across the United States including the Yale School of Management, Wayne State University in Detroit, Arizona State University, Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, Southern New Hampshire University, Emerson College in Boston and the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she taught online for a decade before joining in a faculty role in 2017.

Publications
Reed co-wrote Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap (2024) with co-author Louise Story. The book is a narrative history of Black wealth and the economic discrimination embedded in America’s financial system through public and private actions that created today’s Black-white wealth gap.

Personal Life
Reed was the longtime partner of Terez A. Paylor, a sports journalist who passed away in 2021 at the age of 37. Since his death, Reed has been fundraising for scholarships in Terez’s name. Since 2021 she has been based in Kansas City, Missouri.