Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead is the founding executive director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice and an associate professor of communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. She is the host of the award-winning radio show Today with Dr. Kaye on WEAA, 88.9 FM and the recent recipient of the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence, for her outstanding reporting on the impact racial reckoning has had in helping to close social/racial wealth gap for Black people in America. She was recently selected by The Daily Record as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women of 2022 (an honor that she also received in 2020) and by Black Girls Vote as a 2022 honoree for its “Ladies & Politics” series. Her radio show, Today With Dr. Kaye, is currently a finalist for the 2022 Chesapeake Associated Press Award for Best Talk Show and she is a finalist, for the fourth year in a row for Outstanding Editorial or Commentary.
She is the author of four books, including RaceBrave: new and selected works; Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis, which received both the 2015 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians and the 2014 Letitia Woods Brown Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians; and Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America.
In 2021, Dr. Whitehead received the Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; the Afro newspaper selected her as one of their “2021 Newsmakers of the Year;” and, she was selected by the Baltimore Business Journal to receive the Leaders in Diversity Award. In 2019, she received the Collegium Visionary Award from the College of Holy Cross; the Exceptional Merit in Media Award (EMMA) from the National Women’s Political Caucus; the Baltimore Sun named her as one of Baltimore’s 25 “Women to Watch in 2019”; and Essence magazine included her on the 2019 “Woke 100 List,” of “black women advocating for change.” As one of only a few daily drive-time afternoon radio shows hosted by a black woman, Today with Dr. Kaye received the 2022 Best of Radio and the Outstanding Talk Show Awards; the 2021 and 2020 Chesapeake Associated Press Award for Outstanding Editorial or Commentary; the 2019 Chesapeake Associated Press Award for Outstanding Talk Show, and the second place Award for Outstanding Editorial or Commentary.