Offline Work

Terri began her career on newspapers with the Chicago Tribune. Facing sexual harassment and discrimination in the field, Terri left to to write the first of three books, and branched into a 19-year career in academia. She has also published extensively in national magazines.

While a reporter with the Tribune, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley provided daily fodder for Terri’s stories in Metro and in her “Our Town” column, where she interviewed and published profiles of “average people,” giving voice to their hopes, fears, frustrations and struggles. Chicago at that time was flooded with first-generation immigrants from Europe and Latin America: For Terri, their stories were a treasure trove and personal education. It was, notably, also the tail-end of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to northern urban areas: These Chicagoans met with virulent discrimination in the city founded by a Black man, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a racism fed by city hall that went largely ignored by the town’s overwhelmingly white reporters and editors. Terri wrote profiles and columns telling their powerful personal stories of trauma, courage, fear and grace. She became known as the “in-house” liberal for doing so. Terri was on the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for its stories on vote fraud.

Magazines

Terri’s writing has appeared in The New York Times (Magazine, Week In Review, Science and Travel sections); Harpers (cover story); Ladies’ Home Journal; Redbook; The Village Voice; Columbia Journalism Review; Chicago Journalism Review; Penthouse; Signature; and other publications.

Anthologies in which her stories were republished include The Good Housekeeping Women’s Almanac; Early Childhood Education; Adjustment and Growth: The Challenges of Life.

Academia

University Positions

  • Professor and chair of the department of journalism (now the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute) at New York University
  • Professor and dean of the College of Communications at Penn State (now the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications)

Academic Medical Centers

Director of Campaign Communications

  • NYU Langone Medical Center’s $2.5 billion capital campaign for medical research
  • Weill Cornell Medical Center’s $1.3 billion capital campaign for medical research