B. Denise Hawkins joined the staff of the National Institute for Literacy in February 2007 and serves as the organization's Director for Communications.

Before joining the Institute, Ms. Hawkins was the communications director for the Reading First Teacher Education Network (RFTEN), a three-year, $4.5 million project funding by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. RFTEN worked with faculty and teacher preparation programs at 38 minority-serving institutions to improve the way teachers are taught to teach reading using scientifically-based research and instruction.

Ms. Hawkins has enjoyed a well-rounded career in communications, most of which has been spent as a print journalist. After earning her master's degree from The Pennsylvania State University, she began her journalism career writing about religion and social issues for the Syracuse, NY Post-Standard. She is currently a contributing writer for Diverse Issues in Higher Education magazine (formerly Black Issues in Higher Education magazine) and for The Howard University magazine. As a freelance writer, her stories have been published by Religion News Service and have appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and Today's Christian. In May 2004, her cover story, "The Princess Warrior," published in Christian Reader, won second place in the Evangelical Press Association's Higher Goals in Christian Journalism Award in the Global AIDS Pandemic category. This award-winning feature profiled a young woman from Zambia living triumphantly with AIDS.

Her interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks was included in the book The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry published by the University Press of Virginia. The book, a collection of essays and interviews with renowned African-American poets, is a product of the now-famous Furious Flower Conference. The conference provided a mosaic of the critical and aesthetic issues emerging from African-American poetry and its literary milieu.

Ms. Hawkins has held senior-level public relations positions with two Washington, DC firms specializing in higher education and in health disparities. Ms. Hawkins, a native of Baltimore, MD, completed her undergraduate education at Howard University in Washington, DC.