C. Zawadi
C. Zawadi Morris is a journalist and is the owner of The Original Media Group and publisher of BK Reader (www.bkreader.com) online daily news.
A Chicago native who moved to Brooklyn in 1997, Ms. Morris has a passion for community service, voluntarism, storytelling, photography, traveling and foreign languages as possible. She earned degrees in business administration with a minor in Spanish from The University of Illinois and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.
She lived and studied abroad in Trinidad, Bolivia at age 17, and again during college in Barcelona, Spain. She is fluent in Spanish, conversational in French and has studied Catalan, Arabic and Bambara.
She began her career in media working in Washington, DC, as a bilingual press secretary for NYC Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez. Following that, she worked at Shandwick Public Affairs and Young and Rubicam as a senior account executive in public relations before launching in 2000 The Original Media Group (OMG!), a media relations agency that offers bilingual services in English and Spanish. In 2001, she founded OMnp (Original Media for Non-Profit), a 501c3 organization that offers non-profit content development for digital and print.
In 2008, she made her way back to journalism as a writer/contributor for The New York Times’ hyperlocal experiment, “The Local.” In 2010, she went on to work as editor for AOL’s Bed-Stuy Patch before launching The Brooklyn Reader (bkreader.com), a digital daily news site covering Central and East Brooklyn.
As publisher of BK Reader, Ms. Morris is a member of LION (Local Independent Online News Publishers). She was named a 2015 “Mover and Shaker” in business by NV Magazine, was a 2017/2018 Tory Burch Fellow; and was featured in Crain’s NY Business in 2018.
In 2020, Ms. Morris launched Scriibe.org, a collaborative non-profit news source and incubator for quality, hyperlocal news and investigative journalism covering underserved and under-resourced communities.
Ms. Morris has been recognized by the office of the New York City Council, NY State Assembly and Brooklyn Borough President’s office with awards of excellence, on behalf of BK Reader. And in 2019, she was presented the Community Service Award by Noel Pointer Foundation.
