Rooting out racism: How to get started at your association

Prior to joining the Sidecar team as content manager in August 2019, she was a metro columnist and breaking news editor at The Times-Picayune, a newspaper in New Orleans. Her bylines have also appeared in publications like The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic and The New York Times. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and two rescue dogs.

Maxine attended Louisiana State University where she became the first African American to live in women’s housing. Her career spanned from working in news, public relations, and media development. She worked as the first woman DJ at WXOK AM, the first black DJ at WFMF FM radio, and later as the first black reporter at WAFB TV. Her volunteer leadership on the YWCA Board of Directors, where she participated in the national YWCA racial justice training program, led to her development of The Dialogue on Race Original Series program. This DOR program ultimately led to the development of the Dialogue on Race Louisiana organization. She delivered a TEDxLSU talk in 2015, “Why not talk about race?” and she has received more than a dozen awards from various organizations honoring her for her work around race. In early 2016, Maxine learned she was a descendant of enslaved people owned and sold to Louisiana in an 1838 sale by Georgetown University. This is how she came to be born in Louisiana.