Years active 1995 – present Name Adaora Udoji | Role Journalist | |
Occupation CEO and Founder, outLoud inc, Managing Director of The Boshia Group Education University of Michigan, University of California, Los Angeles | ||
Reinventing Your Career, Adaora Udoji
Adaora Udoji is a media executive, producer and investor whose work focuses on video content and immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). She is also adjunct professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. Udoji is on the Guggenheim Museum Global Innovation Council. She advises several startups including VRAR (NYC Chapter), ArilynAR and HamletVR; is a mentor to the Op'ed Project and a Global Giving Ambassador. She's lived on three continents including Africa, Europe and North America; and holds dual American and Irish citizenship.
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Previously Udoji was a board-member of the Montclair Film Festival and the Women's Advisory Board at NBC Universal. She was also a Woodrow Wilson fellow. Udoji founded The Boshia Group, a network of content and operational strategists, producers and storytellers.
Udoji is a graduate of UCLA School of Law. She is among a small group of journalists who have worked in network and cable news, as well as public radio. She is also on the list of 20 Black Angels Worth Knowing For Minority Startups.
Personal life
Udoji is of Nigerian-Irish American descent. Born to father Godfrey Udoji, former chief engineer for the city of Dearborn, Michigan, and mother Mary, former director of Washtenaw County Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Education
Udoji earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Michigan. After a stint in the communications office at Michigan's Business School and WUOM, the public radio station, she went to the UCLA School of Law. During that time she externed for the Honorable Consuelo B. Marshall, United States Federal Judge, Central District of California, Los Angeles and clerked for the I.R.S.
Career
Udoji expanded into public radio as the co-host of The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji in 2008, a nationally syndicated co-production by WNYC, The New York Times, BBC, WGBH-Boston and PRI. She covered the presidential election of Barack Obama, reporting on her fourth presidential campaign and election.
Prior to that on April 25, 2006, she signed with Court TV News as an anchor.
At CNN she served as a New York-based correspondent covering stories including the 2004 presidential election, Katrina, and the West Virginia Sago mine disaster for the network's television and radio outlets. She began her journalism career ABC News, as an off-air reporter working for Cynthia McFadden covering the OJ Simpson criminal trial and other legal stories. She became an associate producer for ABC News covering the presidential election as a member of the Dole/Kemp press corp, the TWA 800 crash, as well as working on documentary about death row. The network named her a foreign correspondent in 2000 where she was based in London reporting international stories covering Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Udoji covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Vatican, the world economy and sporting events like the British Open and the Tour De France. She also contributed to Good Morning America, World News Weekend and ABC Radio. She joined ABC News in 1995, as an off-air reporter working for Cynthia McFadden covering the OJ Simpson criminal trial and other legal stories. In 1996 she became an associate producer for ABC News covering the presidential election, the TWA 800 crash, as well as working on documentary about death row. The network named her a foreign correspondent in 2000 where she was based in London reporting international stories covering Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
She also contributed to Good Morning America, World News Weekend and ABC Radio.
From 2013-2014 she was the interim president of News Deeply. She has written extensively on the topics of being a Nigerian woman, beating cancer, and Hurricane Katrina.
She is an angel investor who graduated from the Pipeline Fellowship program.
Awards and recognition
Udoji was a member of the CNN news team covering Hurricane Katrina in and around New Orleans, Louisiana for which the network won a Peabody Award. She was also among the team at ABC News awarded a Cine Golden Eagle award for an ABC News documentary on death row. Udoji was recognized by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for contributions to ABC's coverage of the Afghan War in 2002.
In 2009, Udoji was named one of the 25 Most Influential African Americans by Essence Magazine. In 2007 she was an Honoree for the World Diversity Leadership Conference at the United Nations. In 2013, she was a Pipeline Fellow
She was invited to participate in the Jones of New York Little Book Campaign. Udoji is an recipient of the Forty Under Forty Achievement Award by the Network Journal.
Udoji has been a featured presenter for Microsoft, Panasonic, BinderCon, Versions, ARInAction, Girls Who Code, the StartUp Institute NYC, the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs, ACLU, New York Women in Film and Television, the Feminist Press, the Council of Urban Professionals and the New York Women in Communications Foundation.