Cornelia Grumman is an American
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
–winning journalist. She is the Director of the Early Education Program at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation (http://mccormickfoundation.org/) in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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. From 2008–2012, she was the executive director of the First Five Years Fund (FFYF - http://ffyf.org/). The First Five Years Fund is an education initiative committed to improving the lives of at-risk children by leveraging cost-effective investments in early learning. A project of
the Ounce of Prevention Fund
Start Early, formerly known as The Ounce of Prevention Fund, is a nonprofit organization in Chicago that promotes early childhood development in underserved communities across Illinois. Their programs include Educare Chicago, the Educare Learnin ...
(http://www.ounceofprevention.org/), FFYF is supported by five major family foundations: the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was l ...
, the
Irving Harris
Irving B. Harris (August 4, 1910 – September 25, 2004) was an American businessman and philanthropist. With his brother Neison, he co-founded the Toni Home Permanent Company, which was sold to the Gillette Safety Razor Co. in January 1948 for $ ...
Foundation, the
George Kaiser
George Bruce Kaiser (born October 30, 1943) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman of BOK Financial Corporation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As of September 2021, he is the 476th richest person in the world and was, in 2012, one of ...
Family Foundation, and the Children's Initiative, a project of the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation.
Education and early career
Grumman enrolled at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
in 1981 with hopes to pursue a career in hotel and restaurant management; she even attended a cooking school in Paris, France beforehand to prepare. However, after meeting professional journalists at Duke through the DeWitt Wallace Center's Visiting Media Fellows program, she decided to reorient her ambitions, and pursue journalism. She graduated from Duke University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree in public policy.
After graduating, Grumman became a reporter for the Raleigh News & Observer. Her first major assignment was to take a Greyhound bus from one end of the state to the other and write about what she saw and whom she met. On this journey, she found herself impassioned by the types of stories that could not be found in press release, government reports or police blotters.
"I was hooked," she wrote in an autobiographical sketch for "Meet the Tribune Editorial Board," a section published in the December 30, 2002, ''Chicago Tribune''. "I wanted to see more of the world and to understand the connection between individuals, particularly those with faint voices, and the government institutions designed to serve them."
In 1989, she worked in China as a stringer for The Washington Post, covering the student democracy movement that unfolded in
Tienanmen Square. Grumman went on to earn her master's at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
's
John F. Kennedy School of Government
The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public ...
.
uke piece
Uke may refer to:
People
* Uke Clanton (1898–1960), Major League Baseball first baseman who played for one season. Nicknamed "Cat", he played for the Cleveland Indians for one game on September 21, 1922
* Uke Rugova
* Sıtkı Üke (1876–19 ...
"The Kennedy School enhanced my journalism by teaching me the broader context of issues," she said in an interview.
By 1994, Grumman had returned to her home state of
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
as a reporter for the
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
. She concentrated on issues about education, juvenile justice, Illinois politics and the
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
. In 2000, she joined the Tribune's editorial board.
First Five Years Fund
The First Five Years Fund's goal is to expand high-quality early learning services to one million additional children from birth to age five, with half of that expansion serving infants, toddlers and their families.
Through public education, federal advocacy and coordinated outreach, the First Five Years Fund hopes to garner increased support for early learning activities that are:
* Integrated from birth to age five, with special focus on infants and toddlers;
* High-quality and comprehensive in scope; and
* Focused first on serving those children most at-risk
"Early learning is one of the smartest public investments that we can make. Children shouldn't be playing catch-up when they enter kindergarten, and yet so many do. This emphasis on early learning services for babies and toddlers is because by the time a child turns three, a majority of their brain growth has already occurred. If we want greater school success later and a better-skilled workforce, we need to ensure the proper development of our most at-risk children at these earliest ages. Our goal then, is to support high-quality learning programs, such as Early Head Start, followed by preschool, for these earliest learners so that even the most at-risk children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn." Cornelia Grumman, First Five Years Fund.
Grumman stepped down as the executive director of the First Five Years Fund in March, 2012.
Personal
Today, Grumman is married to journalist
James Warren (journalist)
James C. Warren (born January 4, 1953) is an American journalist, currently the executive editor of NewsGuard, which rates the credibility of news and information sites. Previously, he was chief media writer for the Poynter Institute, a national a ...
, they have two sons, Blair and Eliot. They currently reside in the north side of Chicago.
Awards
Grumman received a
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
in 2003 for her series of
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
editorials "Restoring Justice," that she wrote on capital punishment. Her editorials called on government officials to improve procedures for
eyewitness identification
In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court".
The Innocence Project states that "Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wron ...
s, address serious inequities in death-sentence convictions related to race and geography, narrow the eligibility for death penalty and acknowledge the problems with executing the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, and juvenile offenders. "With the authority to impose the death penalty comes a responsibility to get it right," she wrote in her October 3, 2002 editorial, "The Future of Capital Punishment." She fervently added, "Now's the time to get it right. Get it right or get rid of it."
In 2001, 2005 and 2006, Grumman also received
Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism
Casey may refer to:
Places Antarctica
*Casey Station
* Casey Range
Australia
* Casey, Australian Capital Territory
* City of Casey, Melbourne
* Division of Casey, electoral district for the House of Representatives
Canada
* Casey, Ontario
* C ...
for editorials on children and family issues. She received a 2001 Studs Terkel award for her coverage of disadvantaged communities and three Herman Kogan awards for editorials about the criminal justice system.
References
External links
The Buffett Early Childhood FundThe Gates FoundationGeorge Kaiser and J.B. Pritzker on Capitol hillThe Robert R. McCormick FOundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grumman, Cornelia
Living people
Chicago Tribune people
Capital punishment
Writers from Chicago
Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing winners
Sanford School of Public Policy alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Early childhood education in the United States
Evanston Township High School alumni
Harvard Kennedy School alumni