Coming up in Wellston, Missouri, Omarion “Omar” Henry grabbed on tight to his dream. Living in one of the poorest suburbs of St. Louis, he sometimes found it impossible to see beyond limits. One recent spring morning at the O’Fallon Family YMCA, washed in sweat, Omar sprinted up and down an open court, the floor […]
Rita Omokha
Rita Omokha is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she graduated top of her 2020 class, receiving some of the institution's highest awards, including the Pulitzer Prizes’ Traveling Fellowship, the Lynton Foundation Award in Book Writing and the Bill Campbell Award.
She’s an award-winning independent journalist whose writing on race and culture has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Elle, The Daily Beast, Glamour, Teen Vogue, USA TODAY, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, WIRED, among others; her reporting has been featured on major networks such as CNN. Omokha’s enterprise projects include Elle’s America Redefined and Vanity Fair’s They Were Sons, which examine race in America and police violence against communities of color.
During her time at Columbia, she served as co-president of the African Student Association, which spotlighted the intersection of journalism, press freedom, and the African diaspora. Omokha previously worked in digital media for CNN, NBC, and Viacom and served in AmeriCorps in 2013.
