10-15-2023 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 37
Pushing for
PROGRESS
For 10 years, The Baltimore Sun’s
Women to Watch have witnessed social change
and continue to push for more
By Jean Marbella and Maya Lora
F
or over 25 years, April Ryan has had a front-row
seat to some of the largest changes in America as
the country’s longest-serving Black, female White
House correspondent.
Ryan, who was selected as a Sun Woman to Watch in
2018, has focused on issues that impact Black Americans
through five presidencies — including the Donald Trump
years, during which she landed in the spotlight herself when
Trump told her to sit down, after she had asked a question
at a news conference, and called her “nasty” and “a loser.”
With another presidential election approaching, and
Trump again a likely candidate, Ryan said she sees extremists hyperfocused on race because they feel their power
waning in the “browning of America.”
“The racism is overt. It’s not subtle. It’s in your face,”
said Ryan, a Baltimore native who graduated from Morgan
State University and now serves as the Washington, D.C.,
bureau chief for TheGrio, a free, digital media network.
“The older I get, the more I see and the more I hear in this
unique perch that I’ve been in, the more pain I feel, because
I’m like, ‘When will this — when will it get better?’”
Ryan is among the many women with close ties to Maryland who have helped bring social justice issues involving
race, gender, identity, equity and representation to the forefront of discussion in the public sphere.
Many of those influential women have been featured in
The Baltimore Sun’s Women to Watch magazine over its
decade of publication.
There have been shining and even historic moments in
those 10 years: Calls have rung out for representation and
accountability via social media pushes like #OscarsSoWhite
and #MeToo and through protests demanding justice for
lives lost to police brutality that have led to criminal convictions and new laws.
Ryan noted that more people from marginalized communities who understand the needs of the underserved are in
political offices. A little over a decade after America elected
its first Black president, the country seated its first Black,
Asian American and female vice president, Kamala Harris.
Representation has come to Maryland, too, with the
election of Wes Moore, the state’s first Black governor,
and Aruna Miller, the first woman of color to serve as
April Ryan, who was a Woman to Watch in 2018, is a journalist and author who has focused on issues that impact Black
Americans. BARBARA HADDOCK TAYLOR
WOMEN TO WATCH | 2023 | 37