About Me

DaLyah Jones is an eighth-generation Afro-Texan born and raised behind the “Pine Curtain” of rural Deep East Texas. A cultural strategist, journalist, and organizer, her work sits at the intersection of narrative power, community repair, and Black Southern memory.

She most recently served as program officer for the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy, where she supported BIPOC-led newsrooms and helped develop capacity-building strategies across the journalism ecosystem. Her career has long centered historically overlooked communities, especially in rural Texas.

Previously, DaLyah was director of engagement at the Texas Observer, where she led a statewide grassroots media research initiative to help build a reparative journalism framework. She also worked as an investigative environmental reporter, covering Black Southern arts, land, and environmental justice.

Her writing and reporting have appeared in Texas Monthly, Texas Highways Magazine, NBC Think, Okayplayer, The Texas Observer, The Guardian, Scalawag Magazine, and NPR member stations, among others.

She is the founder and lead researcher of the PECAN Project (Preserving Essential Cultures and Narratives), a cultural memory and reparative journalism initiative rooted in Deep East Texas and the legacy of Black freedom colonies.

She served on the planning committee for Funders for LGBTQ Issues’ national Funding Forward conference, and is a former board member and Freedomways Fellow with Press On, a movement journalism collective rooted in liberation.

She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Anderson Center for the Arts.

DaLyah has been a fellow with Press On, the MacArthur Foundation, Lupine Collaborative, and Texas Folklife. She has also participated in journalism and ecosystem-building initiatives with Google News Initiative, Democracy Fund, and Lion Publishers.