Roxanne Jones

Roxanne Jones joined ESPN in 1997. She is one of the founding editors of The Magazine that now boasts more than 14.7 million readers and three ASME awards for General Excellence.
 
Recruited away from The NY Daily News, where she had been Assistant Sports Editor, Ms. Jones began her career at ESPN The magazine as senior editor overseeing the top-revenue generating department – the NFL and boxing, making her one of the nation’s highest-ranking women in sports.
 
Three years later, she was promoted and began to develop The Magazine's ever-expanding sports and lifestyle coverage. In that role, Ms. Jones led a national team of writers and editors who specialized in writing about the culture of sports.
 
After successfully helping to establish ESPN Magazine as the leading sports and lifestyle read for a new generation of sports fans. Ms Jones was tapped by to ESPN to develop new television programs. In 2001, she was nominated for an Emmy for one of her shows, called “The Life,” which was based on a print column in The Magazine. The show covered the nexus of sports and pop culture and changed the way ESPN and the industry covers today’s top athletes. She went on to help create Cold Pizza - ESPN2’s first morning sports and entertainment program, ESPN Hollywood and ESPN’s online broadband network, ESPN360.
 
Ms. Jones is currently responsible for developing new editorial initiatives that extend the magazine’s brand and create new revenue streams.

In 2008, Ms. Jones completed her first book, titled “Say it Loud, an Illustrated history of the Black Athlete,” which tells the story of hundreds of women and men who are the unsung heroes in sports. Dating back to the 1800s, the book focuses on athletes who used sports to fight for racial, gender and economic equality. ESPN has produced a documentary of the same title to go with the book, which aired in February of 2008. The book will be published by Random House and ESPN and goes on sale October 2009.

Ms. Jones is widely considered an expert in sports, entertainment and women’s issues and she is a frequent speaker across the country. She appears regularly on MSNBC, MTV, BET and other networks. An agent of change in her community, Ms. Jones has served on the boards of several organizations including: The National Association of Black Journalists, where she was the first woman to chair the Sports Task Force. She is a member of Women in Sports and Entertainment, the NAACP and the National Council of Negro Women.


Ms. Jones currently sits on the board of trustees for Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods College in Terre Haute, IN – the nation’s oldest Catholic college for women.
 
A firm believer in the power of mentoring, Ms. Jones has received several industry awards including, the Legend Award from the Black Women in Sports Foundation, and the Harlem Y National Achiever Award.


Before joining the sports world, Ms. Jones was a writer and editor on the city desk at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Danbury News-Times. She began her career as a TV news reporter. Ms. Jones is an alumna of Pennsylvania State University and recently completed her executive MBA at UCLA’s Anderson School.
 
Firmly believing life is more than going to the Super Bowl, Ms. Jones spends her best days with her son, family and friends in Brooklyn not far from Ebbets Field.