Joyce Ingram

Joyce Ingram was born in Valley Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania and raised in Westbury, New York. Upon graduating from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1977, Joyce worked as a reporter and editor for the Gannett Westchester newspapers in White Plains, Yonkers and Mount Vernon from 1977 to 1984.

In 1984, she moved to Philadelphia to work for the Philadelphia Daily News, where she was recognized and promoted from Assistant Night City Editor to Deputy Features Editor, Assistant City Editor in Charge of Urban Affairs and then to Issues Editor.

During her work at the Daily News, Joyce conceived and coordinated “Children and Violence”, a series targeted at violence against and by children. The series ran for almost three years and resulted in reforms, solutions, state and regional awards. While working at the Philadelphia Daily News, she was selected as one of the 12 US journalists for the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University in 1991. Here, she concentrated on religious studies and African American history, took classes in Jazz history, took flying classes and earned her solo flight certificate – a tribute to her late father, a US Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War.

She was lured to the Virginia Pilot in 1994, where she became the Deputy Managing Editor, the highest ranking African American in the history of the Pilot at the time of her passing. The Pilot’s editor characterized Joyce as a “wonderful editor with enormous potential and a beautiful human being, a woman of strength and character who cared deeply about the newspaper, the people here and those she befriended throughout her career.” In 1998, Joyce was awarded the Leadership for Middle Managers in recognition as visiting faculty from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

In dedication to Joyce, The Virginia Pilot created the Joyce Ingram Award for Leadership, defined as the highest honor for promoting innovation and diversity in the Virginia Pilot newsroom.

The Joyce Ingram Memorial Scholarship was established by her mother, Evor Ingram, to honor her deeply impactful personal and professional life and to encourage and support future leaders in the field of communications.