Kamaria Roberts

Kamaria Roberts is the Deputy Director of Local News Transformation for API. In this role, Kamaria works with the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program, an innovative yearlong change management program designed for people working in news organizations. Kamaria manages the Major Market Table Stakes program, monitoring and ensuring the success of participating news organizations and leaders. She will also oversee communications strategies that spread the lessons of the Table Stakes programs across the news industry, including BetterNews.org.

Kamaria joins API from McClatchy, where she worked as the senior digital producer for the company’s West region. In that role, Kamaria led newsrooms’ efforts to expand digital content types and grow subscriptions by collaborating with the audience, video and product teams. In 2019-20, Kamaria took part in the Gannett-McClatchy Table Stakes program as a coach to a team from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The program helped boost her understanding of how to lead effectively in the newsroom and was her first introduction to API.

During her time at McClatchy, Kamaria also served as a co-chair to the news division’s first Advisory Team, which focused on diversity and inclusion efforts in newsrooms and in the content that they produce. In that role, she and nine other colleagues delivered significant recommendations of many consequential initiatives, including McClatchy’s mugshot policy and the company’s style change to capitalize Black in references to people and culture. Prior to McClatchy, Kamaria worked as an online production assistant at PBS NewsHour where she covered a variety of beats and national stories. She is an alumna of Howard University in Washington, D.C.