Communicator of Achievement - 2025

Donna Bryson named NFPW’s national Communicator of Achievement 

Donna Bryson of Denver, Colo., has received the 2025 Communicator of Achievement Award from the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW). This prestigious award has been given for 68 years.

The Communicator of Achievement award is the highest honor bestowed by NFPW upon those members who have distinguished themselves within and beyond their field. The recipient, chosen from nominees selected by state affiliates from around the country, is recognized for outstanding achievement in the communications field, as well as service to NFPW, the affiliate organization and the community.

Bryson, a longtime news correspondent/editor and the national affairs editor for Reuters, received the award during a celebration at our annual conference, held Sept. 11-13, 2025, in Golden, Colo.

Bryson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Chicago. Following internships at the Boston Globe and the Associated Press Bureau in Columbus, Ohio, she joined the AP’s Kansas City bureau, then opened a one-woman satellite office in Springfield, Mo. Promoted to world desk editor, Bryson was a UN correspondent in New York before moving abroad. She was in Johannesburg, South Africa, as a correspondent when apartheid ended, attending initial hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and interviewing newly elected president Nelson Mandela. She was then based in New Delhi, Cairo and London, returning to South Africa as the AP’s chief of bureau. 

Bryson returned to the U.S. in 2012 and has published articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, US News & World Report, and Stars and Stripes. She has also authored two books, the award-winning It’s a Black-White Thing and Home of the Brave: A Small Town, Its Veterans and the Community They Built Together.

Bryson has been national affairs editor for Reuters since 2021 and played a key role as a researcher, editor and writer for the award-winning Reuters Slavery Project in 2023. She has been a member of Colorado Press Women since 2014.

Runner-up in the Communicator of Achievement competition was Cathy Koon of St. Anthony, Idaho, a member of Media Network Idaho and retired longtime newspaper reporter/editor and public information  writer.

Other nominees for the 2025 NFPW Communicator Achievement, each put forward by their NFPW affiliate organization, were: Elaine Hobson Miller, Alabama Media Professionals; Kristin Netterstrom Higgins, Arkansas Press Women; Vivian Sade, Woman’s Press Club of Indiana; Léonie Rosenstiel, New Mexico Press Women; Amanda Kosior, North Dakota Professional Communicators; the late Diane Lund-Muzikant, Oregon Press Women; and Terry Haycock, Virginia Professional Communicators.

WHAT IS THE COMMUNICATOR OF ACHIEVEMENT AWARD?

This award, the highest honor bestowed by NFPW, is given to members who have distinguished themselves within and beyond their profession. Nominees presented by state affiliates are recognized for exceptional achievement in the communications field, service to NFPW and impact in the community.

Each year, the COA and runner-up are announced at the Communicator of Achievement Award Banquet during NFPW’s annual conference (we held a virtual event in 2020 and 2021). Nominees are recognized and honored at the banquet, as well as in NFPW’s publications.

Click here to see a list of the past winners.  

About Our COA DIRECTOR

Karen Stensrud of Fargo, N.D., our 2022 COA director, was named NFPW’s COA in 2010. Stensrud is vice president of brand and executive communications at Bell Bank, one of the nation’s largest family- and employee-owned banks. She started her career as a newspaper reporter, then established her own marketing communications business before joining Bell in 2003. In 2021, she was named Woman of the Year in Communications by the YWCA of Cass-Clay. Karen is serving her sixth NFPW president as an appointed board member and was a three-term president of the North Dakota affiliate. She is a two-time NFPW contest Sweepstakes winner and has twice been honored as North Dakota’s Communicator of Achievement.