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Renee Poussaint (August 12, 1944 – March 4, 2022) was an Emmy Award-winning American broadcast journalist and educator known for reporting and advocacy related to Black history.
Poussaint began doctoral studies in comparative literature at the Indiana University before changing course after students expressed that they got most of their information from television. She enrolled in a journalism program at Columbia University in 1973 and was hired as a news writer in by WBBM-TV the same year.
Poussaint's broadcast career started in 1973 in Chicago. She began working as a Washington correspondent for CBS News in the mid-1970s and was hired in 1978 by WJLA-TV as an evening and late-night news co-anchor. In the mid-1970s she worked at WBBM-TV, hosting the lunch hour program Channel 2: The People. Poussaint would go on to work for ABC News, often sitting in for Peter Jennings on World News Tonight and appearing as a correspondent for PrimeTime Live and in news segments on Good Morning America.
In 2001 Poussaint founded the National Visionary Leadership Project in 2001 with Camille Cosby. Funded by Camille and husband Bill Cosby, the oral history project interviewed Black elders 70 years of age and older. Included among the interviewees were Maya Angelou, Roscoe Lee Browne, Shirley Chisholm, and Katherine Dunham. Some of the interviews compiled by the organization were featured in the book A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak, which was co-edited by Poussaint and Camille Cosby.
Poussaint was also the founder of her own non-profit documentary company, Wisdom Works, which produced Tutu and Franklin: A Journey Towards Peace which examined racial reconciliation with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and American historian John Hope Franklin.
Later in life Poussaint taught at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
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