Nancy Day

Nancy Day is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in major newspapers and national magazines. An honors graduate of the University of Illinois, she earned her master’s degree in communication from Stanford University, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright Lecturer in the Russian Federation. Nancy was an editor and reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and San Francisco and the San Francisco Examiner and a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She was awarded a certificate in leadership from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

Since September 2003, she has been chair of the Journalism Department at Columbia College Chicago, known for its diversity across the curriculum, faculty, staff and student body, and, this year for the best college newspaper, The Columbia Chronicle. In 2006, Nancy co-founded Columbia Links, a news literacy, leadership and journalism and skills-building program for Chicago high school students. She is also a mentor at the Goodman Theater-AWJ program for high school women who aspire to be art critics.

Nancy used the JAWS connection even before the organization existed, when fellow Nieman Peg Simpson put her in touch with Caryl Rivers. On a short visit to Boston from San Francisco, pregnant with her first child, Nancy was offered an adjunct teaching job at Boston University, where Caryl is still a professor, little realizing it would change the trajectory of her career. She is looking forward to a year-long sabbatical next academic year, when she intends to visit at least three continents.