Jenka Soderberg honored with Joan Cook Fellowship

KBOO Radio is proud to announce that our Evening News and Public Affairs Director Jenka Soderberg will be honored on September 23rd with the Joan Cook Fellowship awarded by the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS).

The Joan Cook Fellowship Fund honors the extraordinary life of Joan Riddell Cook with grants to bring young women into JAWS at the annual fall camp. The Fellowship hopes to advance the future of young women journalists in honor of a woman who opened doors for them and all of us who follow.

Cook, who died of breast cancer in 1995 in New York, was a founding director of JAWS, a journalist, a union leader, a moral leader and generous friend to three generations of people engaged in the work of making the world a more just place. She was one of seven named plaintiffs — and a moving force — in a class action sex discrimination suit against the New York Times filed in 1974.

After Joan died in February 1995, a gift from Gannett obtained by Betty Anne Williams, then president of JAWS, started the Joan Cook Fellowship Fund. Gifts from friends and co-workers built the fund; major contributions were made by the New York Times Foundation; 1199, the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Workers and by Sharon Rosenhause.  In 2003, the JAWS board of directors voted to designate one scholarship winner each year as the holder of the Joan Cook Fellowship.

KBOO’s Jenka Soderberg recently returned to Portland after spending most of the last year at Stanford University as a Knight Journalism Fellow, where she researched tools for integrating social media and mobile technology into the newsroom (more information about the project: http://knightgarage.stanford.edu/jenka-soderberg).

The Journalism and Women Symposium brings together women journalists and journalism educators and researchers from across the country — and sometimes the world — to meet in an atmosphere of mutual support and professional growth. JAWS supports the professional empowerment and personal growth of women in journalism and works toward a more accurate portrayal of the whole society.