Dr. Gracie Lawson-Borders is Dean and Professor of the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University. She is the past President of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication (ASJMC), and former member of the Board of Directors, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). She is also a member of the Policy Board, Howard Journal of Communications; Editorial Board Member, the International Journal on Media Management, and Advisory Board Member, BlackPast.org at the University of Washington. In 2022 she received the Spirit of Diversity Award from the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity at Wayne State University; and in 2021 was an inductee into the Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors with MediaVillage. She has held offices in non-profit national organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.

Dr. Lawson-Borders is a former associate dean and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences/Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Wyoming. She is also former Director of the African American and Diaspora Studies program at Wyoming; where she has taken students to Ghana as part of study abroad. Dr. Lawson-Borders won the Jason Thompson Commitment to Diversity award while at Wyoming. She also previously served as a faculty member at Kent State University and Southern Methodist University. She received her Ph.D. from Wayne State University, M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. from Michigan State University. She a former journalist, who has worked as a reporter and editor at the Akron Beacon Journal, The Oakland Press and The Chicago Tribune.