Speaking little English, Ji-Wu Jia came to the United States with his wife and son in 1989 from Beijing, China, a society that is much more open to the world now than years ago. Home to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is also where Jia received a bachelor’s degree in computer programming from Beijing College of Economics.
Marie Brown joined the Bowie State University Department of Communications faculty in fall 2009, teaching courses in the broadcast journalism concentration. For more than 20 years, she worked at WUSA-TV9, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.
Sherece West has risen far from her youth growing up in a public housing project in inner-city Baltimore. She is the president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Little Rock, AK, a $150 million philanthropy founded by a former Arkansas governor.