Wade C.L. Williams is an investigative reporter and former chief of the news desk for FrontPageAfrica newspaper and website. Some call her the most powerful newswoman in Liberia where few women have been able to make a career in the media, let alone reach the top ranks. She has interviewed warlords and written about discrimination against homosexuals, which brought death threats against her. Wade was one of several reporter’s whose lives were threatened during the coverage of elections in 2011. When her publisher was forced to flee the country, she kept the paper running.
Wade was awarded Liberian Journalist of the Year in 2013 as well as the German Development Media Award for Africa. In 2012 she was a recipient of the prestigious Dag Hammarskjold fellowship becoming one of four international journalists chosen to spend three months in New York City covering the United Nations and the 2012 UN General Assembly. In that role she broke stories with dramatic repercussions in Liberia and again received death threats, this time for her reporting on the UN’s criticism of Liberian government efforts to end female genital cutting by traditional societies.
In 2012 she received the national awards for human rights and political affairs reporting, joining only a handful of women who have won national reporting awards in Liberia. She has been chosen to accompany the president and government ministers on trips to West African neighbors and the World Bank Forum in Washington D.C.
Wade covered the Ebola epidemic in Liberia for the Associated Press as its camerawoman filming the horrors the deadly disease forced Liberians into. She is fearless and a competition to many male journalist, who take her very seriously. Her style of reporting can be compared to any international reporter. She has written for The Daily Beast, The New York Times, Time, The Guardian, the German Magazine GEO and many more. Wade is a 2015 recipient of the Hubert H. Humprey Fellowship awarded by the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board.
Wade holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from the United Methodist University. As a student, Wade pioneered the first student newsletter, Inside UMU, and graduated magna cum laude.
libpolitics 