Phyllis Fletcher graduated with a Masters of Communication in 2011. Fletcher fell in love with radio and journalism after listening to the Howard Stern Show when she was in college, and is currently serving as a senior story editor for the podcast studio Wondery. “I was captivated and needed to hear what would happen the next minute, the next hour, and the next day,” Fletcher said.

According to her nominator, Fletcher has had a real-world impact in audio journalism through her award-winning reporting, producing, writing, editing and teaching. Before she was an editor, Fletcher was an innovative and creative reporter, always looking for new ways to report issues and do work that made a difference in the communities she covered. Fletcher is a board member for the public radio show Live Wire, the audio documentary organization Third Coast, and is a former president of the Seattle Association of Black Journalists. Internationally, Fletcher has contributed to academic knowledge about journalism ethics through her ethnography of journalists of color.