Award winning Journalist, media innovator, producer and investor, Adaora Udoji who was born December 30, 1968 in the United States of America to Godfrey Udoji, former chief engineer for the city of Dearborn, Michigan, and Mary, former director of Washtenaw County Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has lived on three continents including Africa, Europe and North America, and holds dual American and Irish citizenship. She is of Nigerian-Irish American descent.
Adaora studied political science from the University of Michigan. After a stint in the communications office at Michigan’s Business School and WUOM, the public radio station, she went on to graduate from UCLA School of Law. During that time she externed for the Honorable Consuelo B. Marshall, United States Federal Judge, Central District of California, Los Angeles, and clerked for the I.R.S.
She began her journalism career at ABC News in 1995 as an off-air reporter covering the OJ Simpson criminal trial and other legal stories. She later became an associate producer for ABC News covering the presidential election as well as working on documentary about death row. Adaora also covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Vatican, the world economy and sporting events like the British Open and the Tour De France. She also contributed to Good Morning America, World News Weekend and ABC Radio.
She produces content at the intersection of emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI). She has also worked as an adviser to VR-AR Association-NYC Chapter, an adjunct professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, Chief Storyteller at Rothenberg Ventures and an occasional investor.
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Adaora was an interim president of the highly acclaimed media-tech startup and News Deeply. She was a board-member of the Montclair Film Festival and the Women’s Advisory Board at NBC Universal. She was also a Woodrow Wilson fellow and subsequently founded The Boshia Group, a network of content and operational strategists, producers and storytellers.
At CNN she served as a New York-based correspondent covering stories including the 2004 presidential election, Hurricane Katrina, and the West Virginia Sago mine disaster for the network’s television and radio outlets. On April 25, 2006, she signed with Court TV News as an anchor.
She covered the presidential election of Barack Obama, reporting on her fourth presidential campaign and election. She has also contributed to Good Morning America, World News Weekend and ABC Radio. She is an angel investor who graduated from the Pipeline Fellowship program.
She was also among the team at ABC News awarded a Cine Golden Eagle award for an ABC News documentary on death row. Udoji was recognized by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for contributions to ABC’s coverage of the Afghan War in 2002.
In 2009, Adaora was named one of the 25 Most Influential African Americans by Essence Magazine. In 2007 she was an Honoree for the World Diversity Leadership Conference at the United Nations. In 2013, she was a Pipeline Fellow. She has been recognized for her contributions to CNN’s 2005 Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University and Peabody Awards, and by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for reporting at ABC News. She is a recipient of the Forty Under Forty Achievement Award by the Network Journal.
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She has also been a featured presenter for MIT Solve, Producers Guild of America-East, Games for Change Festival, NYC Media Lab, Microsoft, Panasonic, BinderCon, Versions, ARInAction, Girls Who Code, the StartUp Institute NYC, the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs,[20] ACLU, New York Women in Film and Television, the Feminist Press, the Council of Urban Professionals, Internet Week NYC, SXSW and the New York Women in Communications Foundation
