The board is the policy-making and oversight body of AIIJ. Our current members are:

Olivia Barton Ferriter
Victoria Coman-Jackson
Brant Houston
Samuetta P. Nesbitt
Emily Jones Rushing

Rushing currently serves as the board’s president, with Houston serving as its treasurer. André Natta, as AIIJ’s executive director, is an ex-officio member.

Olivia Barton Ferriter

Olivia Barton Ferriter retired from the U.S. Department of the Interior as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget, Finance, Performance and Acquisition. She previously served as Deputy Director, Office of Policy Analysis, and other key roles in the department. 

She served on Capitol Hill as a House Appropriations Committee associate staffer and a press secretary for U.S. Rep. Tom Bevill of Alabama. She was also an award-winning journalist, working for The Birmingham News and Newhouse News Service in Washington, D.C.

A graduate of the University of Colorado, she moved back to Birmingham with her family in 2023.

 

Victoria Coman-Jackson

Victoria L. Coman-Jackson is a Birmingham native and a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts (Creative Writing) and the University of Alabama (Journalism). She worked at the former Birmingham Post-Herald as well as newspapers in Washington, D.C.; Ohio; and Louisiana before becoming a Community News Reporter at The Birmingham News and its virtual home, AL.com.

She is currently a freelance journalist and employed in Student Housing and Residence Life at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

 

Brant Houston

Brant Houston is John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting in the department of journalism at the University of Illinois. Before becoming the Knight Chair in 2007, he served for more than a decade as the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Before joining IRE, he was an award-winning investigative reporter at daily newspapers. Houston was part of the newsroom staff of The Kansas City Star that won a Pulitzer Prize for its work on the 1981 walkway collapse at the city’s Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Houston is Board Chair Emeritus of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a coalition of nonprofit journalism centers he helped found. He is the author of “Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide,” and “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook.”

Houston’s grandparents lived in Birmingham’s College Hills neighborhood, and he was a visitor to the city during his growing-up years.

 

Samuetta P. Nesbitt

Samuetta Nesbitt retired as Senior VP of Public Relations and Community Affairs for United Way of Central Alabama, where she was in charge of corporate brand and communications.

She holds a B.A. from The University of Alabama in communications and an M.S. from The University of Alabama at Birmingham in education leadership. She worked as a broadcast journalist in the mid-’70s and in public relations for Compass Bank and Birmingham Public Schools.

Among community honors, Nesbitt received the Woman of Distinction award from the Cahaba Girl Scout Councils and as named among the Top Business Women of 2003 by The Birmingham Business Journal. Professional memberships include The Women’s Network, The Kiwanis Club of Birmingham; The Public Relations Society of Alabama; Leadership Birmingham (1992); and Leadership Shelby County (2014).

 

Emily Jones Rushing

Emily Jones Rushing combines a background in journalism with experience in nonprofit work, having retired from the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham as Director of Communications and Marketing in 2013.

Her work at the Community Foundation included leadership in developing national guidelines for disaster recovery and in creating national standards for community foundation marketing materials and communications. During her time at The Birmingham News, she was deeply involved in developing neighborhood coverage and served as the first Metro Editor in 1978. She was part of a team of reporters recognized by the Associated Press for coverage of the effects of an extreme heat wave in 1981. In the late 1980s, she edited 100th anniversary books for The Birmingham News and her alma mater, Converse University.

A long-time Birmingham resident, she is currently a member of the board of trustees of Converse University.