Catherine Kelly is a longtime Detroiter and Detroit Public Schools graduate who knows that narratives matter. Catherine believes narratives create inclusion, grow opportunity, and change history, which is why she has built a long career in media, communications, strategy and branding. For more than a decade, Catherine served as publisher of the Michigan Citizen — a widely read and respected community newspaper. A family business, the Michigan Citizen started on her parents’ dining room table in 1978. Part of the second wave of Black newspapers, the outlet’s mission was to reflect the realities and aspirations of Black Detroit. It provided coverage for entrepreneurs, activists, community efforts, and, overall, celebrated the accomplishments of Detroiters and their families.Catherine attended the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She also holds a bachelor’s degree from Eugene Lang College at the New School.

Malachi Barrett is a mission-oriented journalist trying to do good and stir up some trouble. 

Barrett previously worked at MLive in a variety of roles in Muskegon, Kalamazoo, Lansing and Detroit. Most recently, he led MLive’s statewide coverage of the 2020 presidential election, tracked political extremism and covered social movements. His coverage of Michigan’s connection to the January 6 riot was cited by Congress and federal investigators. 

Barrett has won Associated Press awards for his reporting on housing and environmental pollution. He was named Michigan’s 2019 Newspaper Rising Star by the Associated Press. He was also included on The Washington Post’s 2020 list of “outstanding politics reporters to follow” on social media (@PolarBarrett). Barrett graduated from Central Michigan University in 2016, where he proudly served as editor-in-chief of the student-operated newspaper.

Barrett lives in the Jefferson Corridor. 

Passionate about shifting the narrative of Black cities & neighborhoods, Bailey is an Emmy Award winning journalist, Director of Engagement for BridgeDetroit, co-host of the podcast Authentically Detroit, and host of Urban Consulate. Previously, he served as Chief Development Officer for the Eastside Community Network. In 2019, Bailey traveled across Europe with The German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2020, he was named a BMe Vanguard Fellow. In 2015, he was selected as an Emerging City Champion by Knight Foundation and 880 Cities in Toronto.

Henderson is a native Detroiter who has nearly 30 years of journalism experience as a writer and editor, and a deep-rooted connection with the city that birthed him.

A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a two-time winner of both the Scripps Howard and ASNE national awards for opinion writing, Henderson has also won more than 24 national awards for writing and editing. He was honored in 2014 as Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Henderson’s wide-ranging career includes stints at the Chicago Tribune, where he was part of the team that built ChicagoTribune.com, at the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, where he covered the five terms at the  U.S. Supreme Court, and at the Baltimore Sun, where his editorials won clemency in 2000 for a death row prisoner. Henderson also spent more than a decade at the Detroit Free Press, where he was the first African American to lead the paper’s editorial page and its first black Pulitzer winner.