Soledad O'Brien's New Voice

Award named in CNN anchor's honor

by Nicole D. Smith

April 25, 2008

It’s 6:30 in the morning. CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, an anchor and special correspondent, has already started her day. She begins with a four-mile walk with her Blackberry in hand, making her to-do list along the way. Her long list includes the tasks of being a mother of four little ones, a wife of 13 years and a CNN news reporter renowned for her hard-hitting interviews.

“I have a life that’s busy and enjoyable on all fronts,” says O’Brien as she prepares for another extensive night of the 2008 election coverage. “With my friends, family, husband, kids and work, sometimes it’s hard, and I have to juggle.” 

But it’s not O’Brien’s ability to juggle her super mom, wonder-woman duties that have grabbed the attention of Community Voices, an Atlanta-based, not-for-profit organization that focuses on healthcare for underserved populations.

Dr. Henrie Treadwell, director of the program, which is a division of the Morehouse School of Medicine, says she and the Community Voices committee took note of O’Brien’s in-depth reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Treadwell says O’Brien’s unbelievable tales of loss, abandonment and heartbreak in New Orleans during the 2005 storm’s aftermath convinced Community Voices that she deserved more than merely an award for outstanding coverage. Instead, the organization decided the award should bear her name – the Soledad O’Brien Freedom’s Voice Award, created to recognize outstanding catalysts for social change. 

“I think Soledad gave very sensitive treatment to the people who were left,” says Dr. Treadwell, who herself recently visited New Orleans. “And in some ways, [her reporting] restored some dignity to a process that was destroying many of us emotionally. … We couldn’t see it [firsthand,] but she could.”

The eyewitness accounts that made such an impact on Community Voices reflect an experience that O’Brien, who has seen a lot in her 28 years in television news, finds unforgettable. She says the images of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which led to more than 100,000 evacuees coming to Atlanta – most of whom stayed – are etched in her memory. While recently being honored at the High Museum of Art as the first recipient of the award named after her, O’B rien shared stories from covering the hurricane. 

“I was sleeping on the floor in an RV for ten days the first time [I] was there,” she says. “I remember blue tarps that covered up bodies piling up behind me. … And there was a black woman who reminded me of my mom– older, maybe in her seventies – who kept asking, ‘Why are they treating us like animals? I just don’t understand.’ And she just kept repeating that.”

That kind of story and that kind of raw truth led Community Voices to name the award after a woman, one who is deemed a mover and shaker at Morehouse School of Medicine, even though it is a predominately black, all-male college.

“We want people to think about someone who is a woman, a mother, a professional,” Dr. Treadwell says. “In order to address some of the needs we see – even those things that are affecting men most disproportionately­ – women’s voices need to be raised. We have been in a country, and in a world, where men are in the driver’s seat with regards to policy, practices and other things. But we don’t think that’s a paradigm that has to continue.” 

O’Brien is breaking that mold set by the old paradigm, agreeing that women should and can be leaders because of their instinctive versatility.  The Harvard graduate says Atlanta women – and all women – have the innate ability and agility to be a layered career-minded individual. That is why O’Brien says she believes she was able to connect with an Atlanta-based organization.

“I think that I’ve been picked because, in many ways, I would resonate with women everywhere,” says O’Brien, “who juggle a lot and still try to focus on doing a really good job in the careers that they love.”

Photos Courtesy Paris Mountain Photography