Edwin Okong'o

Kenyan-born journalist and writer Edwin Okong'o is the editor in chief of Minneapolis-based Mshale, a newspaper for African immigrants. He holds a master's degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied newspaper, magazine and radio journalism, and won several awards for excellence. Okong'o's master's thesis from Berkeley, "The Day I Became a Man," was the first-place winner of the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists, Region 11, Mark of Excellence Awards for best nonfiction magazine article. Okong'o has been vocal about the need to reform media, both here in the United States and in Kenya. His goal is to act through his experience and journalistic skills as a liaison between African immigrants and other communities in order to improve accuracy in press coverage of Africa. During the recent post-election violence in his home country, Okong'o was a resource for several news organizations including the New York Times, Al Jazeera and PBS Frontline/Word, which has since tapped him to join its 2008 U.S. presidential election reporting team.