The duPont-Columbia Awards Jury
Madhulika Sikka, duPont Jury Chair
Madhulika Sikka is a media executive with more than two decades of experience across all platforms, and is currently the Vice President and Executive Editor at Crown Publishing, an imprint of Penguin Random House. She is a recipient of multiple awards for her journalism including Emmys, duPonts, Peabodys, as well as from NABJ, SAJA, the RTNDA and the RTCA. Sikka is also a writer and author.
Mark Whitaker, duPont Juror
Mark Whitaker is a journalist, author and contributing correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning. From 1998-2006 he was the Editor of Newsweek - the first African-American head of a national news magazine, and has been an Executive at NBC News and CNN Global. His most recent book is Saying It Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.
Betsy West, duPont Juror
Betsy West is an Academy Award®-nominated Emmy-winning director/producer of RBG, along with Julie Cohen. Most recently, she and Cohen directed Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down. Their documentary JULIA was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2021, and MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY won the 2022 duPont Columbia and Peabody Awards. She is the Fred W Friendly Professor Emerita at Columbia Journalism School.
David Rummel, duPont Juror
David Rummel is editor-at-large at The Global Reporting Center. Prior to this, he worked as a journalism instructor at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism, as a senior producer at The New York Times, and a producer for Frontline, among other positions. During the course of his career he has won Emmys, the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, George Foster Peabody Awards, George Polk Awards, I.R.E. Investigative Reporter and Editors awards, and Overseas Press Club awards.
Lee Kamlet, duPont Juror
Lee Kamlet is the former Dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT. Prior to that, he was a producer for 21 years at ABC News and 10 years at NBC News. Over the course of his journalism career, he was awarded a duPont Silver Baton, three Emmy Awards, and a Writers Guild of America Award. He currently is a freelance writer, and lives in Fairfield, CT.
Mark Lukasiewicz, duPont Juror
Mark Lukasiewicz is the Dean of The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University. Before this, he worked as a veteran producer, journalist, and media executive. In his decades-long career, he has produced numerous live and long-form programs, winning 10 Emmys, two Peabody Awards, and the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, among other journalism and international film festival awards.
Nina Alvarez, duPont Juror
Nina Alvarez is the CBS Assistant Professor of International Journalism and Director of Global Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. She is also a journalist, documentarian and video photographer. For over twenty-five years, she has reported breaking news and feature stories from around the world, on broadcast and web segments, radio reports and long-form documentaries. She is the winner of multiple duPont-Columbia Awards.
Robert Smith, duPont Juror
Robert Smith is the Director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia Journalism School. He was most recently a host for NPR's Planet Money where he told stories about how the global economy is affecting our lives. Prior to Planet Money, Smith was a national and New York City correspondent for NPR, covering a variety of breaking news stories, from Hurricane Katrina to the "Miracle on the Hudson" landing of US Airways Flight 1549.
Geraldine Moriba, duPont Juror
Geraldine Moriba is the Sr. Vice President and Chief Content Officer for News and Entertainment at The Grio. Formerly, she was an executive and a producer at CNN, NBC, ABC, PBS and the CBC. She is also an independent filmmaker, director and writer. Most recently she hosted and produced the podcast “Sounds Like Hate,” and was a Stanford University Brown Institute Research Scientist/John S. Knight Journalism Fellow.