2012 Faith Forum Panelist: Katie Sherrod

Texas Public Faith Forum at Perkins School of Theology: Sept. 27, 2012

Forum Panelist:

Katie Sherrod is an author, producer, and commentator based in Fort Worth, Texas, as well as the communications director for the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. She is a regular contributor to the Texas Faith blog of the Dallas Morning News and a panelist for Flashpoint on Inside Texas Politics, WFAA, Channel 8, Dallas.

Sherrod is producer and director of the award-winning documentary Voices of Witness Africa [2008], which tells the stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Anglicans in Africa.

She is the editor of and a contributor to Grace & Gumption, Stories of Fort Worth Women published by the Texas Christian University Press [Fall 2007], and of the Grace & Gumption Cookbook, also published by the TCU Press [Fall 2010]. She is the author of Women of the Passion, the story of the passion of Jesus from the viewpoint of the women who followed him.

She also wrote and produced:

:: Women of the Table, an award-winning 20-minute documentary about ministries of both lay and ordained women in the Episcopal Church which premiered at the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis

:: Freedman’s Cemetery Memorial: A Place of Healing, an award-winning 2001 PBS documentary narrated by Alfre Woodard.

:: Desert Echo, a six-minute arts feature aired on KERA Channel 13 and featured in the 2001 Desert Echo exhibition at The Women’s Museum in Dallas.

She was associate writer on the 2000 WFAA documentary on The Women’s Museum. In 1996 she produced, wrote and narrated Stand in the Temple and Tell, a 30-minute documentary of the history of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus, the group most responsible for the ordination of women to the priesthood in The Episcopal Church.

Her awards include:

• 2008 honorary doctorate from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for her decades of work as a journalist on women’s issues, particularly the issue of family violence; and for her work for full inclusion of all the baptized in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

• The 2001 Vivian Castleberry Award for Best TV Feature Story

• The 1997 Dallas Press Club Award for best television arts feature in the state for the Freedman’s Cemetery documentary

• The 1994 Vivian Castleberry Award for Best Newspaper Commentary

• The 1995 White Hat Award of Planned Parenthood of North Texas for her consistent advocacy of women's reproductive freedom

• The 1992 Texas State Commission on Family Violence Award for her 25 years of writing about efforts to combat family violence

• Dallas Press Club Awards for Best Newspaper Column, Best Radio Commentary and Best Interview/Talk Show

• The Exceptional Media Merit Award from the National Women's Political Caucus

• The Associated Press Managing Editors Award for feature writing, and the Texas Headliners Award for investigative reporting for a series on rape. This early 1970s series in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was one of the first in the nation to examine the crime of rape, and was a catalyst for the formation of the Rape Crisis Center in Fort Worth

• Multiple awards for a series on battered women, which led to the formation of Women's Haven, a shelter for battered women and their children in Fort Worth, now Safe Haven. In 1988, Women's Haven inaugurated the annual Katie Sherrod Award to honor individuals working to end family violence.

She was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1987 for outstanding contributions in the field of communications, named one of Fort Worth's Outstanding Women in 1988 and Texas Woman of the Year in 1989. She was one of the founders of both the Network for Executive Women and the Women’s Policy Forum. She has participated in Leadership Fort Worth, Leadership Texas and Leadership America.

Sherrod is married to the Rev. Gayland Pool. She has a daughter, Daniella Judge, and two amazing grandsons, ages 10 and 8.