Pitt Faculty Member Honored at Women and Girls Foundation’s Celebration of Women in Media

PITTSBURGH—Cindy Skrzycki, a senior lecturer in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of English and business correspondent for GlobalPost.com, was among 15 women in media honored during the Women and Girls Foundation (WGF) Gala Awards Ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 6, at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Downtown. 

The Pittsburgh-area women were recognized for “leading the way in print, radio, PR, TV, film, and on the Internet, and those utilizing multiple media to promote and amplify the voices of women and girls.” 

Pitt alumni Sally Kalson (A&S ’72), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist, and Mary Robb Jackson (A&S ’74, ’74G), KDKA TV news reporter, also were among the 15 women honored. 

Sponsored by UPMC, the WGF gala was chaired by WQED Multimedia incoming CEO Deborah Acklin. The ceremony’s emcees included Laverne Baker Hotep, director of community arts and education at the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime; Patrice King Brown, KDKA-TV news anchor; Eleanor Schano, television and radio journalist; and Sally Wiggin, WTAE-TV news anchor. 

Filmmaker Abigail Disney, grandniece of Walt Disney, gave the keynote address. Her first film, the feature-length documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, was screened after the awards ceremony. The film, which won the Best Documentary Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008, tells the story of the women of Liberia and their successful efforts to bring peace to their broken nation after decades of civil war. 

Skrzycki joined Pitt’s Department of English in 2004 at the invitation of then-department chair David Bartholomae. Under her guidance, Pitt students have landed internships at such places as Bloomberg News, Dow Jones News Service, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Washington Post, CBS, CNN, NPR, Congressional Quarterly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and U.S. News & World Report. 

“In a brief time, she has dramatically transformed our journalism program,” said Bartholomae. “Most importantly, she has become an inspiration for some of our very best students and has prepared them to obtain internships and jobs with major news outlets across the country—in Atlanta, Washington, Boston, and New York.” 

Prior to joining Global Post, a news service based in Boston, in 2009, Skrzycki was a business columnist for Bloomberg News, a worldwide financial news service.    

She was on staff at The Washington Post for 18 years, covering federal regulatory issues, management, and technology. Skrzycki’s special expertise in the business of federal regulation and lobbying led to her writing a weekly column titled “The Regulators” for more than a decade. 

Before joining The Washington Post, Skrzycki was an associate business editor at U.S. News & World Report, specializing in transportation issues, and a Washington correspondent for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she covered the gamut of business topics. She also worked in the Washington bureau of the Fairchild News Service, covering the steel industry, and was a business writer for The Buffalo News. 

Skrzycki is the author of the book The Regulators: The Anonymous Power Brokers Who Shape Your Life (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003). 

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Skrzycki is an honors graduate of Canisius College, where she was editor of the student newspaper, The Griffin, and a member of the DiGamma Honor Society. Skrzycki holds a master’s degree in public affairs and journalism from American University in Washington, D.C. A former two-term member of the board of trustees of Canisius College, she is a member of the board of directors of the Three Rivers Youth Orchestra in Pittsburgh and a former member of The Pitt News Advisory Board. 

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