JEMELE HILL

Jemele Hill is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, and podcaster. Hill is the Co-Founder of Lodge Freeway Media, a writer for The Atlantic, host of the Spotify podcast, “Jemele Hill is Unbothered” and author of Uphill, a Memoir.

Hill’s decades-long journalism career has included stops at the biggest sports media networks and several reputable newspapers. Before joining ESPN, Hill was a sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 2005-2006 – the lone African American female sports columnist in North America. She joined ESPN in 2006 as a national columnist for espn.com. Her profile gradually rose as she began to make appearances on television, hosting and featuring in SportsCenter, First Take, Around the Horn, The Sports Reporters and Outside the Lines. After her stint as SportsCenter host, Hill was a senior columnist for The Undefeated, ESPN’s sub-site that focuses on the intersection of sports, race, culture and politics.

Her foray into daily television began in 2013, when she and longtime friend Michael Smith began co-hosting the daily sports discussion show, His & Hers, inspired by their popular podcast of the same name. In 2020, Hill and former ESPN anchor Cari Champion launched a weekly late-night show on Vice Network called Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick to Sports. The show covered politics, sports, news, current events and pop culture.

Hill also is stretching her muscles behind the camera. She is the executive producer of the ESPN documentary on former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. Hill is also currently developing a comedy series for Showtime with acclaimed actress Gabrielle Union. She has also appeared in crime series Power Book II: Ghost and The Best Man: Final Chapters movie.

A veteran in the podcasting space, Hill’s two-time Webby award-winning podcast, Jemele Hill is Unbothered features in-depth, thought-provoking conversations with some of the biggest newsmakers across entertainment and politics. In 2022 the podcast won two NAACP Awards for Outstanding Podcast in the Arts and Entertainment and Society and Culture categories. Previous Unbothered guests include Vice President Kamala Harris, Spike Lee, Gabrielle Union, Stephen Colbert, and more.  In 2020 Hill co-hosted The Wire: Way Down in the Hole, a podcast recapping every episode of the HBO series.

In July 2016, Hill participated in Emmy Award winning The President and the People: A National Conversation, a one-hour town hall with President Barack Obama on race relations, justice, policing and equality.