Tamara Ward is a journalist, strategic communicator, and AI researcher whose work bridges storytelling, public policy, and technology.
Tamara is a 2023 NABJ Pew Youth Justice Fellow, where she authored a data-driven series on disproportionate school-based arrests in Maryland public schools. A former reporting fellow for E&E News, she covered environmental and energy policy, the 2020 presidential election, the House impeachment hearings, and the impact of COVID-19 on Capitol Hill.
Earlier in her journalism career, Tamara was a staff writer for APG Media, where she reported on government and politics in Southern Maryland and the Maryland statehouse—earning two awards from the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association. Her articles have appeared in several regional and national outlets.
With more than 15 years of experience as a freelance journalist and on-air talent, Tamara has worked across sports broadcasting, community news, corporate media, and commercial voice-overs.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication and a Master’s degree in Journalism, both from the University of Maryland, College Park. Tamara is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence for Business at the University of Baltimore.
Her policy experience includes a fellowship in the U.S. House of Representatives through a Brookings Institution immersion program. Separately, she authored a policy paper for the Olin Brookings Commission on the use of AI and machine learning to combat the prescription opioid epidemic, drawing on research by data scientists at Washington University in St. Louis. After serving as a strategic communicator for federal agencies such as the USDA, FEMA, and IRS, Tamara now focuses on AI ethics, responsible innovation, and content creation that decodes artificial intelligence for non-technical audiences.