Angela Ards
Revson Fellow 2002-2003
Associate Program Officer
Effective Citizenry Surdna Foundation
Angela Ards is a journalist and holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Ards began her career as an editor and writer at The Village Voice, where for four years she covered race/gender politics, arts & culture, and community organizing. Subsequently, she was named the Haywood Burns Fellow at the Nation Institute, where she wrote about local and national social movements for The Nation and provided political commentary for its broadcast arm, RadioNation. Ms. Ards’ work has appeared in numerous other publications, including Ms. and The Crisis, as well as the anthologies Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature and Still Lifting, Still Climbing: Contemporary African American Women’s Activism. For the past year and a half, she has studied the relationship between philanthropy and organizing as an associate program officer in the Surdna Foundation’s Effective Citizenry program, whose focus–youth civic engagement and political participation–intersects with her career as an advocacy journalist. She has served on the boards of LISTEN, Inc., a D.C.-based intermediary that supports youth organizing and leadership development in poor, urban communities, and the Kopkind Colony, a summer program that explores the role of journalism in building social movements. A native of Dallas, Texas, Ms. Ards has lived and worked in New York City for a decade. She is currently writing a memoir of post civil rights activism, national and international, among youth of color to address criminal justice, an area of unfinished business of the civil rights movement. To develop and contextualize this work, she pursued an independent study with Professor Farah Griffin and took an oral history seminar in the Institute of African American studies at Columbia.
(The Revson Fellow’s biography that appears above was last updated in 2002. Revson Fellows may update their biographies on this site by sending email to: revson@columbia.edu)
I had been working as a freelance journalist for over a decade. In some ways I was stymied and at a crossroads, trying to figure out how to more effectively write about the issues I was covering, how to broaden my understanding of the way the city is run and why, and ways in which I could reach a larger and broader audience. While a Fellow I took courses in urban planning, political science, law, ethno-musicology, and creative Writing. The courses strengthened my understanding of the ways politics, law, culture, and the urban environment intersect, giving me a grasp of the factors that contribute to whether or not that intersection results in conflict or community. One of the major benefits for me of the year spent as a Revson Fellow was interacting with the other Fellows. From them I got information, smarter, new perspectives, different ways of viewing events. As important, I began friendships and alliances that have lasted to this day. A community of activists/friends whom I can call on for advice, support, and understanding, and not merely of the political kind.
