Darryl Ford Williams

Media executive Darryl Ford Williams was born on January 30, 1957 in Montclair, New Jersey to Douglas Ford, Jr. and Dorothie Ford. Williams received her B.A./B.S. degree in speech arts with a foreign language minor from Boston College in Newton, Massachusetts in 1979.

Williams’s career in media began in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when she joined KDKA-TV as a producer in 1979. In 1987, she was hired as an executive producer at WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C. Two years later, Williams founded the Ford Williams Agency, where she worked as a consultant until 2004. During this time, her clients included ABC News; WTAE-TV Pittsburgh; Black Entertainment Television, Inc; WJLA-Washington, D.C.; and Gannett Broadcasting. Between 1994 and 1996, Williams also served as a coordinating producer for ABC’s flagship Good Morning America program in New York City, New York. In 2004, she became vice president of content at WQED Media in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and remained there seventeen years. During that time, she produced the documentaries August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand (2015) and Harbor from the Holocaust (2020).

Williams served on the boards of the Shady Side Academy, the Pittsburgh Film Office, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, the Pennsylvania Charter Schools Appeal Board, the Winchester Thurston School, the University of Pittsburgh Clinical & Translational Science Advisory Board, Point Park University’s Executive Committee and Board of Trustees, the National Black Programming Consortium, and Black Public Media. She is also a member of Links, Inc.; Jack and Jill of America, Inc.; the African American Chamber of Commerce; and the International Women’s Forum.

Williams received multiple awards and honors, including seven Emmy Awards and various Emmy nominations. In 1996, Boston College presented her with an Alumni Award for Excellence. She was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand in 2016; and, in 2021, she received the Robert L. Vann Media Award from the Pittsburgh Black Media Foundation.

Williams lives with her husband, Joseph K. Williams III, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They have one child, Joseph.

Darryl Ford Williams was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 16, 2023.