Akiba Solomon is the Editorial Director of Colorlines. She is an NABJ-Award winning journalist and 2015 Root 100 awardee from West Philadelphia. Online, she has written about culture and the intersection between gender and race for Colorlines, Ebony.com, and Dissent. As Colorlines’ inaugural reporting fellow, Solomon reported on reproductive health access for women of color during and immediately after President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. More recently, the Brooklyn-based Howard University graduate wrote Essence magazine’s July 2015 cover story featuring Orange is the New Black cast members. In the fall of 2015 she was one of five journalists selected by the Foundation for Middle East Peace to travel to Israel/Palestine to experience the region’s difficult political dynamics firsthand and learn about the lives of everyday people. In September 2014, shortly after unarmed Black 18-year-old Michael Brown was slain by White, then-officer Darren Wilson, she was one of few journalists allowed on a Blac