Ponchitta Pierce

Ponchitta Pierce is a journalist with extensive experience as a television host and producer, and magazine writer. She began her career in journalism at Ebony magazine where she rose to become its New York Editor and New York Bureau Chief of the magazine's parent company, Johnson Publications. She has worked at CBS News as a special correspondent; and at WNBC-TV in New York, where she hosted and co-produced a daily television show, "Today in New York." She has also hosted programs for New York's PBS station, WNET/Thirteen. In addition to her work in television, Miss Pierce has served as a Contributing Editor for Parade magazine and McCall's magazine and a Roving Editor for Reader's Digest, and has written for many national publications including AARP The Magazine (Modern Maturity); Family Circle, More, Newsday and Ladies Home Journal. Several of her most recent interviews appear in My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (AARP/Sterling Publishing), a book that presents eyewitness accounts from people who played pivotal roles in the civil rights movement. Long active in community service, Miss Pierce is a member of the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Association; Thirteen/WNET; the Inner-City Scholarship Fund of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York; Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (H.E.L.P.); the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles, CA; the Women’s Foreign Policy Group; and Cuban Artists Fund. Miss Pierce is also a member of the External Affairs Committee of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; The Economic Club of New York; and the Lotos Club. She is a member of the Columbia Presbyterian Health Sciences Advisory Council and a member of the Executive Committee of the Council of Advisors for the National Center for Children in Poverty. Miss Pierce is a graduate of the University of Southern California with a B.A. (cum laude) in journalism. She also studied at Cambridge University in England.