NPR's Teshima Walker Dies

The award-winning executive producer of DC-based NPR's "Tell Me More," Teshima Walker, died Friday morning in her home town Chicago Illinois, with family beside her, at the age of 44 following a two-year battle with colon cancer.

Since 2011, Walker was the executive producer for NPR's midday news program "Tell Me More", hosted by Michel Martin. Walker was part of the public radio family for more than a decade. She first joined the afternoon newsmagazine All Things Considered as a journalism fellow in 2000. Later she spent three years as a producer for The Tavis Smiley Show, and then for News and Notes. In 2007, Walker signed on as senior supervising producer of Tell Me More, and served the program in various capacities for the next six years. A Chicago native, Walker first came to NPR by way of WBEZ, where she was a senior producer for morning newsmagazine Eight Forty-Eight.

Walker briefly left NPR in January of 2006 when Cathy Hughes, founder of TV One and Radio One, created a talk network - Syndication One News-Talk Network. Walker served as Assistant Program Director responsible for helping to develop and manage the talk programs featuring author Michael Eric Dyson, Civil Rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton, legal expert Warren Ballentine, and a sports talk show 'The Two Live Stews'.

"Teshima made us all want to dig a little deeper, think harder, and be better," shares 'Tell Me More' host Michel Martin. "She was everything you could want in a manager and friend: kind and open-hearted when you needed her to be, and tough, but fair, when you needed her to be. While I already miss her amazing laugh and her incredible off-key rendition of the "Happy Birthday" song, I know I am better for having heard them both. We are all very grateful for the time we had with her, and thank her husband, parents and sister for sharing these precious last days with us."

Walker graduated from Tennessee State University in Nashville with a degree in Communications. She was a life-time member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Walker received her Masters of Public Administration from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Teshima Walker is survived by her husband, writer Jimi Izrael, her parents, William and Vonceal Walker and her sister, Eureva Walker.

NPR contributed to story: //www.npr.org/people/134232730/teshima-walker