Each year, in conjunction with the Media for a Just Society Awards, Evident Change recognizes one superior piece of media with the Distinguished Achievement Award. We are pleased to welcome Yukari Kane, Art Taylor, and Kai Wright as this year’s guest judges for our most prestigious award.
Yukari Iwatani Kane (she/her) is a founder and CEO of the Prison Journalism Project. She is an author, educator, and veteran journalist with 20 years of experience and was a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Her book Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs was a best-seller, translated into seven languages. She has taught at Northwestern University and at UC–Berkeley. At San Quentin News, she developed a curriculum and reader for prison journalism. Yukari was a member of the 2021 INN Emerging Leaders Council and a 2021–2022 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow.
Herman “Art” Taylor (he/him) is President and Chief Executive Officer of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. As head of the Alliance, he oversees all aspects of the organization’s work, which include setting standards for soliciting organizations, evaluating charities in relation to these standards, publishing the Wise Giving Guide, assisting local Better Business Bureau charity review programs, promoting charity accountability, and providing a variety of materials on informed giving to individual, institutional, and business donors and to government.
Appointed to his position in July 2001, the Wise Giving Alliance Board of Directors selected Mr. Taylor as President & CEO for his record of accomplishments in the nonprofit arena and his business, professional, and volunteer background.
Kai Wright is host and managing editor of Notes from America with Kai Wright, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future. It airs live on public radio stations around the country each Sunday evening. The Atlantic hailed the show as one of the “The Best Podcasts of 2018,” declaring that it “has always been able to swiftly explain current events through the lens of the past.”
In addition, Wright served as one of the hosts of Indivisible, a national live radio call-in show that WNYC convened during the first 100 days of the Trump Administration to invite Americans to come together across divides. The show aired on 165 public radio stations across the country.
Wright’s journalism has focused on social, racial, and economic justice throughout his career. As a fellow of Type Investigations, he covered economic inequality, access to healthcare, and racial inequity. Wright is the author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, as well as two surveys of Black American history. Most recently, he was a contributor to the New York Times bestselling collection 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019.