An award-winning journalist and best-selling author, Jonetta Rose Barras has twenty years experience reporting and commenting on national and international social, political, and cultural trends. In 2001, Ms. Barras was rated one of the Top 50 Most Influential Journalists in Washington D.C. by The Washingtonian magazine along with Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, Maureen Dowd, and Jim Lehrer among others. She is considered one of the freshest voices speaking for black America.

Ms. Barras is the author of Whatever Happened To Daddy's Little Girl: The Impact of Fatherlessness on Black Women (One World/Ballantine, 2000) and The Last of the Black Emperors: The Hollow Comeback of Marion Barry in the New Age of Black Leaders (Bancroft Press, 1998).

She has been a contributing political editor for The Washington City Paper and an Op-ed columnist for the Washington Times. Her writings also have appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The New Republic, The American Enterprise, and The New Democrat among others. She has appeared as an analyst on CBS 60 Minutes, C-Span, CNN, WHUT-TV (Howard University Television) WRC-TV (an NBC affiliate in Washingotn,D.C.) PBS (This is America with Dennis Wholey) and FOX (The O'Reilly Factor).

She is a highly sought speaker who has given talks throughout the United States--state correctional facilities in Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin, Maryland University, Duke University, The Arizona Fatherhood Conference, and the National Fatherhood Summit 2000—and in Paris, France.

A graduate of Trinity College, Ms. Barras is the mother of two –Umoja Shanu and Afrika Midnight. She currently resides in the District of Columbia, although she continues to call New Orleans home.