Scruggs-Leftwich Wins Front Page Award

(WOMENSENEWS)–Women’s eNews contributor Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich has won the 2007 Front Page Award for her commentaries distributed by Women’s eNews: “Bigger, Uglier, Story of Addicted Women Goes Untold” and “HIV-AIDS and Black Women, Time for Fireworks.” The award is given by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

Dr. Scruggs-Leftwich has been a contributor to Women’s eNews from its earliest years. She also is a professor, author, public scholar, policy analyst, community activist, corporate trustee and national spokesperson on behalf of creative leadership and urban politics.

Scruggs-Leftwich Biography

As a professor at National Labor College-George Meany Campus, she applies her research skills and teaching experience to facilitate adult education. She also has a long history as professor at several nationally recognized universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Howard University, George Washington University and SUNY College at Buffalo. For 10 years, she served as executive director/COO of the Black Leadership Forum Inc., a 29-year-old confederation of the top national civil rights and service organizations. Her most recent book, “Consensus and Compromise: Creating the First National Urban Policy Under President Carter,” was released in 2006.

Dr. Scruggs-Leftwich earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania; a master’s degree in public administration from the Hubert H. Humphrey School of the University of Minnesota; and a bachelor’s degree in political science, with honors, from North Carolina Central University. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Germany.

Previously, she was deputy mayor of Philadelphia; New York state’s housing commissioner; HUD’s deputy assistant secretary; executive director of President Carter’s Urban and Regional Policy Group, which issued the United States’ first formal national urban policy; and director of the Urban and National Policy Institutes, of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in Washington, D.C. Dr. Scruggs-Leftwich co-owned several non-depository banking corporations, has worked on Wall Street as a consulting vice president in municipal finance, and is a trustee/officer of corporate boards.

She regularly is quoted in newspapers around the country and has been profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications. She has been a commentator on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” MSNBC and CNN and appears frequently on many other public affairs and network news broadcasts. Dr. Scruggs-Leftwich has written over 100 publications in addition to Women’s eNews and her op-eds have been published in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Miami Herald and many other papers. She writes a syndicated column for the national e-media publication Women’s eNews and The National Newspaper Publishers Association. Her next book, “Sound Bytes of Protest: Prose, Profiles and Images,” will be published by Third World Press.

She has been lauded as a history maker who is “one of the most important intellectual leaders of the modern civil rights movement.” She is listed in Who’s Who in America; Who’s Who Among Black Americans; Who’s Who Among American Women; and in the seminal Biography of African American Women. She and her husband, Rev. Edward V. Leftwich, are parents of three daughters and one son, and have three grandsons. Her specialties include urban planning and policy; public administration and governmental behavior; civil rights advocacy; women’s empowerment; labor education and leadership development; strategic planning; and corporate governance.

The Prize-Winning Commentaries

Other Women’s eNews commentaries by Scruggs-Leftwich: