About Ashanti

Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, producer, educator, author, higher education equity consultant and public relations expert with more than a decade of experience. Throughout her career she has worked as a television news anchor, reporter and producer in markets across the country, in addition to producing branded video content and public relations and communication strategies for various companies.

She got her start working as a field producer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's broadcasting unit, writing business reports for Sun-Sentinel media partner, WTVJ-NBC 4 and conducting interviews for special report pieces airing on Sun-Sentinel owned WSFL. Her first on-air position was at KFOX-TV in El Paso, TX, where she was a morning news reporter and fill-in news anchor. From there, it was on to the bright lights of Las Vegas, NV where Ashanti worked as a news anchor and reporter for KLAS-TV. There she won her first Emmy award for continuing coverage reporting.

From Vegas she went on to work for KXAS-TV NBC 5, the NBC owned and operated station in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX as a news anchor and reporter.  While at NBC 5, Ashanti was recognized by the Lonestar Regional Emmy Chapter with two Emmy nominations-- one for news anchoring and another for news writing.

Currently she is the interim associate dean of the Center for Media and Design at Santa Monica College, overseeing a campus of 20-plus career education programs. Ashanti is also the former faculty advisor to SMC’s student-run newspaper, The Corsair. Under her leadership as faculty advisor, The Corsair Newspaper won numerous national awards, including several Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker awards, known as the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism. She was also an equity coach for the Communication and Media Studies department at SMC while she was a tenured journalism professor. In that role she led two groups of faculty in assisting them with decolonizing their curriculum and closing equity gaps, specifically for Black and brown students at SMC.

Ashanti has also served as the Assistant Director of Student Media for Loyola Marymount University, advising and overseeing the institution's award winning student-run television station, newspaper and yearbook. She has also taught journalism courses at USC Annenberg, Loyola Marymount University, UCLA Extension and Richland College.

In addition to her work in higher education, Ashanti is currently the first Black woman ever to be elected President of the national Society of Professional Journalists board of directors. She is also the immediate past president of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as of the start of 2023. In that role she has had the opportunity to build coalitions with Southern California journalism organizations, media unions and First Amendment advocacy groups in order to lobby the state legislature to pass a bill into law that strengthened press freedoms in California.

Ashanti earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Columbia University and a Master of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Miami.