Rochelle Riley Email & Phone Number

Rochelle Riley ended a nearly 20-year career as an award-winning Detroit columnist in 2019 to become the City of Detroit’s Director of Arts and Culture. She now guides the city’s investment in its creative workforce and creates opportunities for transformative innovation. In 2020, she conceived the United States’ first city-wide memorial to victims of Covid-19: 15 funeral processions that circled the city’s Belle Isle past 924 photo billboards of victims. The installation gained international attention and provided closure for families across the city who could not hold individual funerals. More than 25,000 cars drove past the billboards; millions viewed it online and on television; and it was featured during national coverage of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. A year later, her office partnered with the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and the Cranbrook Art Museum on The Healing Memorial. And in 2022, her office, Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship, launched a national marketing campaign to highlight the city's powerful murals, documenting every mural in the city on the Detroit Mural Map. Rochelle, who also is an essayist, keynoter and photographer, is the author of “That They Lived: African Americans Who Changed The World” (2021) and “The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery. Rochelle travels the country hosting conversations about the burden that America still bears by refusing to deal with the aftermath of American enslavement. She makes occasional television and radio appearances, including on National Public Radio. She worked previously at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, The Dallas Morning News and The Washington Post. She received the 2017 Ida B. Wells Award from the National Association of Black Journalists “for her outstanding efforts to make newsrooms and news coverage more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve” and the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She was a 2016 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, a 2019 inductee into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame and a 2021 inductee into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Rochelle lives near the banks of the Detroit River. But the world traveler never stays at home long. She has visited 28 countries and 33 states … and counting.

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  Director Of Arts And Culture

  City Of Detroit

  May 2019 - Present - Detroit And Everywhere

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  University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill

  Journalism