TRACEY SCRUGGS YEARWOOD
Tracey Scruggs Yearwood is a visionary media strategist, communications manager, and producer for television and documentary films. As Vice President of Multimedia for the Chicago Urban League, she is responsible for the creation and launch of “nextMEDIA,” a multimedia platform designed to connect a much wider audience to the League’s employment, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment programs.
The mission is to create wealth in the African American community that is shared and sustainable. Using a combination of more traditional media- radio, print, and television--along with “round-the-clock” accessibility of the web, nextMEDIA will offer a wrap-around experience for entrepreneurs, job-seekers, and career changers that is equal parts reality programming, do-it-yourself information, savvy advice and the latest news. While the African American community is the primary audience, nextMEDIA will also offer a fresh perspective to Chicago’s business community.
Yearwood previously served as the Director of Community Relations for the Illinois Department of Human Services, the State’s largest agency. In this capacity, she developed and implemented a proactive marketing and community relations strategy, which was instrumental to the success of several gubernatorial initiatives, including Team Illinois. Team Illinois is an unprecedented effort involving the collaboration of multiple state agencies, which actively engage community stakeholders in order to address the challenges of that community.
An award-winning producer, Yearwood wrote, developed and produced news and feature stories for CNN, Cable News Network, including a four-times weekly women’s news segment, “All About Women,” a two-hour weekly international news program, “World Report,” and “The Reporter’s Notebook” monthly segment. Yearwood also served as a liaison for more than 350 international affiliates as an international newsource coordinator and post-produced the “Turner Trumpet Awards” during her CNN tenure.
Yearwood’s production experience is not limited to news. As a freelance field producer for Harpo Productions, Yearwood produced “Remembering Your Spirit” and other segments for the Oprah Winfrey Show. Yearwood’s documentary credits include a film about the 31st December Women’s Movement in Ghana. As a recipient of the Ethel Payne Fellowship, she conducted research for a television documentary on the impact of grass-root womens’ movements in South Africa’s post-Apartheid era.
Yearwood holds a Bachelor of Science degree in communications from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
To learn how the Chicago Urban League can help you please visit:
www.TheChicagoUrbanLeague.org
