Yvette Walker was named VP Editorial Page Editor at the Kansas City Star to lead an award-winning team in 2023. She left academia, where she previously was assistant dean at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.

Coming back to the news industry, this time in the Opinion section, was unexpected but welcomed, she said. It is the second stint at The Star, working in features and news in the early 2000s.

“It really just feels like coming home,” she told The Star. “People like to hear what we’re thinking,” she said. “… We are helping people make decisions about their daily lives through the information that we’re imparting online and in the paper. Opinion does that, too, but in a way that the audience can really understand what we’re thinking and how we’re thinking about it. So that’s a little different, but really so enticing to me.”