MORE ABOUT AMBER

Amber has captured history in all forms. 

As a Howard Magazine Editor, Amber led the editorial team during Vice President Kamala Harris’ (B.A. ’86) historic run as the first Black, Asian female president. Other milestones include the University’s student newspaper, The Hilltop, celebrating a centennial as America’s oldest Black student newspaper, the 100th Charter Day celebration and dinner, and President Joe Biden’s Commencement address. She curated the award-winning Fall ‘23 Hip-Hop+Howard Magazine which dived into Howard and Hip-Hop’s symbiotic relationship to celebrate the genre’s 50th birthday. Under Amber’s leadership, the magazine captured a grand gold medal that the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (C.A.S.E.) called an “exceptional collection of pieces connecting pop culture and social discourse…[with a] clear sense of strategic intent and relevance to its communities.
As a freelance weekend copyeditor and journalist for The AFRO’s D.C. bureau, Amber completed feature stories about Iota Phi Theta’s last living founder, Lonnie Spruill, The Congressional Black Caucus, and Black businesses through food reviews and stories.

Amber is the founding editor of the Spokane Black Stories, an annual series which features Black high schoolers’ art in various mediums, primarily literary, every Black History Month. She also created Spokane’s LGBTQ Spectrum Yearbook in a “Slice of Spectrum Life” series, a mini-feature series detailing the Spokane’s queer community.

Amber’s former roles include being a Racial-Equity Reporter in the Pacific Northwest at the Spokesman-Review. Her award-winning reporting includes coverage of the Indigenous tribes of America’s Murdered and Missing Indigenous Person Movement (MMIP), anti-LGBTQ+ Idaho protests, and the lives of immigrants in Spokane such as boxer Fadya Hakere.

She was a Hoopfeed sports reporter during the Washington Mystics’ 2019 championship season, the franchise’s first WNBA title run. As a sports reporter at Mississippi State University, Amber covered all sports, including the women’s basketball Final Four appearance in 2017 when the Bulldogs defeated UConn, effectively ending the Huskies’ 111-game winning streak. She was named Sports Reporter of the Year by MSU’s student newspaper, The Reflector. 

She is considered the first female color commentator of the Football University (FBU) Championship Tournament, making her debut in 2014 under the late, iconic announcer Wayne “The Voyce” Matthews. Under Matthews, Amber performed halftime radio updates and interviewed little league teams in a series of other tournaments and all-star leagues such as the Grassroots Youth Football League (GYFL) and the Diamond Sports Group. 

Outside of journalism, Amber’s nonfiction has been recognized with a few awards such as her hybrid piece ‘Instagram is Nonfiction’ that placed second in Stellium Literary Magazine’s Cusp Prize. She won the $1,000 prize for TEXLANDIA’s Magazine’s 2022 Best in the Land Contest for my nonfiction short story ‘Party Favors.’

Contest judge and writer Cameron Dezen Hammon said, “At times, ‘Party Favors’ leans toward the psychic force of Kiese Laymon’s ‘Heavy,’ and the musicality of Junot Diaz’s ‘This Is How You Lose Her.’ This writer is one to watch.”