Vanessa D. Williams

Ms. Vanessa D. Williams is currently a senior editor for the Continuous News Desk at The Washington Post. Her primary responsibilities include overseeing the production of breaking news stories for washingtonpost.com. Along with another senior editor, Vanessa oversees five writers who work exclusively for the CND and collaborate with reporters and editors across the newsroom to keep the paper's Web site up to date on breaking stories around the region, the country and the world. She has worked on the CND since April 2005 and joined The Post in 1996 and other assignments have included covering D.C. city hall and serving as an assistant city editor.

Before delving into the wide and wonderful world of the Web, her most exciting assignment at The Post was covering the 2004 presidential race. She spent most of the year following former North Carolina senator John Edwards, first during his campaign for the Democratic nomination and later when he became John Kerry's running mate.

Before coming to the Post, she was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Vanessa devoted much of my 12-year tenure at the paper covering local government and politics. Her most exciting assignment was leading coverage of a story about voter fraud in a state senate election. The coverage was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

She began her journalism career at her hometown newspaper, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, when she was in the 10th grade. She returned to work as a reporter at the paper after graduating from Florida State University with a bachelor's degree in English.

She is a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists.