Multichannel News is pleased to announce that news anchors from ESPN, WNYW Fox 5 New York and Spectrum News NY1 will host the March 23 celebratory luncheon for Wonder Women of New York, a more than 20-year institution honoring women in leadership roles in media and telecommunications.
Kimberly A. Martin, NFL reporter for ESPN; Natasha Verma, co-anchor of The 5 O’Clock News and The 10 O'Clock News at WNYW, and Cheryl Wills, anchor at NY1, will help present the Wonder Women awards at the Ziegfeld Ballroom event.
“We are so excited to have these accomplished on-air anchors with us to help us salute an incredibly accomplished group of women leaders in media,” Kent Gibbons, content director for Future’s Multichannel News, said. “Our hosts are a vital part of the program, along with our event partners including the New York chapter of The WICT Network and the sponsors who make it all possible.”
You can read more about the event and our honorees — including 2023 Woman of Influence awardee Margaret Brennan of CBS News — at the event website.
But for now, please meet the hosts of Wonder Women of New York:
Kimberley A. Martin, who has covered the National Football League as a national writer, columnist and beat reporter for more than a decade, joined ESPN as an NFL reporter in March 2020.
She showcases her versatility as a reporter, analyst, TV personality, writer and host on a variety of network programming, including Sunday NFL Countdown, Fantasy Football Now, NFL Live, Get Up!, First Take, Around the Horn, SportsCenter, ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, Outside the Lines and Andscape.
Martin also is the co-host of ESPN’s only all-female podcast, First Take Her Take, a weekly show that discusses the biggest stories in sports and culture and provides insight into the unique professional roles and personalities of its three hosts.
Notable ESPN features for Martin include the award-winning piece, “Gratitude,” highlighting Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller’s journey toward sobriety and NFL stardom, as well as profiles on Maia Chaka, the first Black woman to officiate a game in NFL history, and the late Bill Nunn Jr., a trailblazing scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers and a 2021 member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Martin joined ESPN from Yahoo Sports where she served as a senior NFL writer and columnist. Prior to Yahoo, Martin had a stint with The Washington Post as a Washington beat writer (2017-18). She also served as a columnist for The Buffalo News in 2017 and was a New York Jets beat writer for Newsday (2012-17).
In addition to football, Martin has covered a variety of sports, including Major League Baseball and the NBA.
A member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Martin received NABJ’s Emerging Journalist of the Year award in 2011. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and African-American Studies, before earning her master’s degree in magazine, newspaper and online journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Natasha Verma is the co-anchor of The 5 O'Clock News and The 10 O'Clock News on WNYW Fox 5, which she joined in October 2022 from KUSA Denver. She had been a weekday morning anchor at KUSA.
Prior to her time in Denver, Verma worked as a reporter and anchor for NBC10 in Boston and WBBH in Fort Myers, Florida.
She started her career in broadcast journalism as a reporter for News 12 The Bronx in New York.
A graduate of Columbia University, she holds a master’s degree with honors in Journalism, earned at age 18. She is the University of Texas’s youngest-ever graduate and recipient of the 2022 Outstanding Young Texas Exes Award. At 17, she earned two undergraduate degrees — in broadcast journalism and biology pre-med.
She is also a cancer survivor and founder of the Verma Foundation, which is a national nonprofit organization committed to giving real-hair cap wigs to cancer patients.
Cheryl Wills is an original. Literally. She's one of the few staff members at NY1 since the beginning. She joined the station on July 13, 1992, and considers reporting on the city where she was born and raised to be a privilege.
Her list of accomplishments is long and impressive. She is the only NY1 reporter to ever interview a sitting president (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia). In 2018, she became the first African-American reporter in NY1's history to win an Emmy. Add those to the awards she's received from the New York Press Club and the Associated Press, and Cheryl Wills's mantle is getting pretty crowded!
When not at work, she spends her time lecturing and writing books about her great-great-great grandfather Sandy Wills — a slave who fought in President Lincoln's army during the Civil War.
Wonder Women of New York will take place on Thursday, March 23, at the historic Ziegfeld Ballroom. ▪️
