Lesli Foster has been a mainstay in Washington, D.C. and regional television news since 2001, when she joined the CBS affiliate WUSA-Channel 9 as a reporter. In her current role as the station’s weeknight news anchor, Foster has weathered many of the ups and downs of newsroom drama, on the screen and on the streets.

But throughout her career, there’s been one constant. Foster helped conclude the 2024 Widening the Pipeline fellowship launch program by sharing the core of her ambition. “You all have heard a lot about authenticity and bringing your full selves to your experience, and that has been something I’ve tried to make a career of on my own, and it hasn’t always been easy. But I am at a point in my career where I would say there are more peaks now than valleys, so I have a little more agency.”

Foster outlined one of her most ambitious public journalism projects to explain that quest for authenticity: her July 2023 reporting about The CROWN Act (Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair), legislation designed to protect people of color against discrimination for wearing natural hairstyles. Foster not only convened a conversation featuring her Channel 9 colleagues sharing their own experiences with natural hairstyles in the workplace, but she also wore a braided hairstyle on-air.

“One of the things that I wanted to do with the CROWN Act was to be a lot more invested in what it meant to be your full, natural self on the air,” Foster said. “And I had never done anything outside of put chemicals in my hair or straighten my hair because the message to women like me had always been that in order to be beautiful and marketable and credible and professional, you had to come in this way and look this way.”

Still, Foster knew she had to be pragmatic about her strategy. “If you know anything about television, you know that we have contracts, and contractually, they contracted with this Lesli. So if I were to show up and make a radical change to this Lesli, I kind of need to tell them that I’m going to do that.”

At the time, her news director was an Afro-Latina woman, so Foster felt comfortable proposing the idea. “I wanted to make sure that this woman who has backed me and supported me in my career, that I gave her a heads-up that this is something that I’d like to do. And she said, ‘I’d love it, but I think we should do more than just have you show up in braids. Why don’t we do more? Why don’t we have a conversation?’

Foster and her colleagues produced a feature conversation based in a Montgomery County, Maryland hair salon. California was the first state in the nation to pass Crown act legislation, and Montgomery County was the first locality in the nation to adopt it.

“There’ve been 20 states that have passed it since then and about 40 localities across the country,” Foster said. “And we had a great conversation, an honest conversation about what it means and what we’ve experienced. And we invited Will Jawando, who is a local councilman from Montgomery County to come in and talk about his own hair experiences and why this was so important for him.”

On July 3, 2023, the official CROWN ACT Day, Foster and her colleagues created different segments throughout newscasts aimed at helping educate viewers about the issue. And Foster wore her hair in braids on that day.  “No one at work knew except my colleagues who were sitting here with me and my bosses. So when I walked in, people walked past me and then they stopped and they were like, ‘Leslie, is that you?’ So it was really one of those moments that you don’t forget in your career. That was, to me, pretty affirming to have had the opportunity and the agency to do this kind of thing here in Washington.”

And Foster wants young journalists of color to hold onto their individuality. “I hope that for all of you on your journey, it may not be the CROWN Act that is the thing where you’re able to bring your full self to work, maybe for you, it’s the kinds of stories that you pursue. And so when we talk about a crowning moment, a moment where you feel affirmed, I hope that all of you have those in your career.”

Access the full transcript here.

The Widening the Pipeline Fellowship is sponsored by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation and Lenovo. NPF is solely responsible for the content.