When Nia-Malika Henderson was in her 30s, she became a student again. She got into Columbia University’s journalism program and became an intern first at Newsday and then at The Washington Post.
Read More"I was probably the oldest intern ever at The Washington Post," she says.
But the risk of changing direction -- from academia where she had been studying American history at Yale University to the newspaper world -- was worth it, she says.
Now, she's got a career she loves.
Henderson, who graduated from Duke in 1996 with a degree in cultural anthropology, is a writer for The Washington Post's The Fix, a blog covering the "intersection of politics with culture, demography and emerging sources of power."
As a former writer for The Post's now retired She the People blog, she covered stories about politics and gender. Henderson's journey into journalism has taken her to newspapers including The Baltimore Sun, Newsday and Politico, racking up datelines from Capitol Hill to Air Force One.
"It [journalism] was this perfect marriage of what I was interested in. It was almost like ethnographic fieldwork," she says. "I’m going into these folks' houses, and they're talking to me about their lives, and then I'm writing about them. I'm bearing witness to whatever they're going through."
Henderson says her parents were influential in shaping her love of politics and culture. They were both involved in the civil rights movement, and her father marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama in the 1960s.
Today, Henderson sees the potential to empower others through her writing.
"I feel a duty to help people who are coming up behind me -- women, African-Americans -- expanding the pool of people who are at these tables."
Henderson comes back to Duke several times a year to talk to students interested in journalism and public policy and says she really means it when she tells students to reach out to her for help.
"It's about helping people along the way. You're generous as a friend. You're generous as a colleague," Henderson says. "The connections you make with people and the doors you open for other people -- that's the kind of thing that really matters."