Advancing Kentucky: Alum, award-winning journalist keeps her community connected to the world

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 31, 2024) — Sarah Ladd, a 2019 University of Kentucky College of Communication and Information graduate, made quite a mark on the world early in her career.

In the five years since graduating with her journalism degree, the award-winning journalist has traveled extensively, reported on major breaking national news, helped launch an online news service, and had her bylines appear in major publications. She is also a regular panelist on Kentucky Educational Television’s program “Comment on Kentucky.” 

Ladd is also a first-generation college graduate and the first woman in her family to pursue higher education. 

Growing up in a remote area in Bardwell, Kentucky, she sometimes felt invisible to everyone outside her hometown. However, a roadside sign that she often passed began to give her a sense of belonging that many Kentuckians share. 

“UK had an extension office right outside of Bardwell, so I got to see the UK sign a lot, which may seem like a small thing but it made me feel like I was a part of UK already, even at that young age, and even before I knew anything about UK Athletics,” Ladd said. 

The real tipping point that fueled her desire to go to college happened the day she discovered an English literature book while perusing a Goodwill store. 

“I was a young teenager at the time and I remember reading that the world was so much bigger than anything I had ever imagined and I wanted to spend years studying it,” Ladd said. “I still have that book on my shelf today. It was the most influential thing that made me want to go to college.”

Ladd was homeschooled K-12 so attending college was her first time in a public education setting. Her journey began at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah. While at WKCTC, a teacher and mentor asked her what she wanted to do with her life. Her answer? “I want to write.”   

Ladd’s mentor used to teach at UK and he thought the journalism program there would be a good fit for her. Ladd said she learned the most about UK from him. 

To understand Ladd’s unwavering certainty of wanting to become a journalist, one only has to look at a core characteristic of her personality. She has always been in awe of the news — where it comes from, and how people get it. 

Ladd traces her fascination for news back to the Kentucky snowstorm in 2009, when Bardwell experienced a three-week blackout.

“It felt like a very isolating experience living on a farm and I just didn’t know what was going on outside. We had no internet, no power. The only way to know what was going on was the newspaper and I was in awe of that. I was young at the time and I remember thinking the newspaper was the way to connect the entire community, and our community to each other and the state.”

Ladd’s need for news was so strong that she asked her parents if she could walk around and interview neighbors to find out how they were doing, to which she got a firm “no.”

“I got the bug from that experience, just wanting to hear other people’s stories about their experience and it stuck with me for years. I always go back to that as the birth of my passion for news, and English was always my favorite subject. I wanted to write all the essays,” she said. 

Ladd graduated from WKCTC with an associate’s degree with a focus on journalism in 2017 and immediately moved to UK. Once on campus, she didn’t waste a minute pursuing her dream. She located the Kentucky Kernel office and asked the editor to put her to work right away. 

“My time at the Kernel was by far the most impactful experience I had while at UK,” she said. “Coming from a small community college, I knew a lot of people and I was involved in leadership. Suddenly, I was in this large university environment and I desperately wanted a sisterhood and I found it at the Kernel.”

While at the Kernel, Ladd developed friendships, including her best friend, that she still maintains today. Those relationships also created her professional group that prepared her for a career in journalism that even she couldn’t imagine at the time. Her memories of late press nights, ordering food and being tired together the next day created a strong bond with her Kernel coworkers who were also classmates and members of her study groups.

Education continued after graduating from UK with her bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2019. She went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction writing from Spalding University in 2022.

When Ladd was in journalism school, she had the impression that she would have to pay her dues in her first job before she had the opportunity to work on big stories. Little did she know what the near future had in store for her. 

“I feel like as soon as I graduated, the world caved in on us. The year I started at the Courier Journal in 2019, I was sent to Nebraska on a reporting mission for the USA Today network and then sent to Belgium and Luxembourg to cover the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.”

Ladd describes 2020 as “chaos.” The Breonna Taylor story broke in Louisville and a racial justice movement swept the country. COVID-19 became a household word and impacted everyday life in America. 

Ladd didn’t realize at that moment how big the Breonna Taylor story would become or that she would be so heavily involved by attending protests with her fellow journalists. Her reporting was personal for her because while in journalism school, she did a project on how press in Kentucky failed the civil rights movement by underreporting. She wanted to do something right, and for Ladd, that meant showing up at the protests every day.

“It felt so surreal to be a part of something so huge and to this day, I’m very proud that I was at the Courier Journal at that moment in time and I got to be a part of that coverage.”

Her work was honored, along with other reporters in the Courier Journal newsroom, with the  2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist awards in Public Service and Breaking News for coverage of Breonna Taylor’s death and the subsequent protests in Louisville. 

Ladd experienced stress and burnout attending protests day after day that often included getting tear gassed and seeing someone get shot. She was ready for a change, so when she was offered the opportunity to be reassigned to cover the pandemic, she took it. Health care coverage would soon become an even bigger part of her life as she entered the next phase of her career. 

Ladd says the highlight of her career so far is helping to launch the Kentucky Lantern, a wire service that is part of the States Newsroom, the nation’s leading network of state-based nonprofit news outlets. Editor Jamie Lucke (also a UK journalism graduate) hired Ladd as the first among the inaugural reporters. 

“I helped define my job by coming up with policies and contributing ideas to what we want to do in the state and how we want to fill gaps in reporting,” Ladd said. “Today, we have a staff of three full-time reporters, our editor and a slate of freelancers that includes Deborah Yetter that I worked with at the Courier.”

At the Lantern, Ladd has taken on the role of health and health policy reporter covering mental health, maternity issues, child welfare and LGBTQ+ issues. Her series “Breaking the Stigma” garnered her the Mental Health in Media Award from the Kentucky Psychological Association.

“I love writing about mental health and all the ways it intersects with physical health and impacts our daily lives. This is how we break the stigma surrounding the topic. The people who share their stories with the world are making a change,” she said. 

“I think being from Kentucky and being from a poor region of Kentucky, I have seen my whole life what it means to have health impact everything, health and poverty, health and racism, health and stress. I feel like there are so many stories to be told about Kentucky’s health and policy, and about real people who have to overcome obstacles every day to gain access to health care. I could spend decades telling their stories and this drives me in my career.”

Education still plays a large role in Ladd’s life. As an adjunct teacher at her community college, WKCTC, she is launching a journalism class. Her advice to any student who wants to pursue a career in journalism is this:

“There’s a lot to be said for what you learn in the classroom; however, journalism is like a trade in that you really don’t learn until you do it. For me, that was going to the Kernel and getting busy writing. I learned so much from those assignments. It’s not all going to be groundbreaking reporting but find a way to do it, whether it’s working for your student newspaper or pitching yourself to a local paper. Just get comfortable walking up to strangers and asking questions.”

Ladd’s passion for the news remains strong and she continues to work to keep her community informed about the important issues that impact daily life. 

“I’m half a decade into what must be one of the most exciting careers, and I don’t see myself leaving it any time soon. I get to be an expert on so many different topics, I get to meet brave Kentuckians dedicating their lives to making the state a better place, and so many people choose to share their stories with me. There are so many things that keep me excited about journalism, but the people who trust me with what are, sometimes, their worst moments, top the list. It sounds cliche, but I truly don’t take that lightly.”

You can follow Ladd at sarahladd@outlook.com, X @ladd_sarah, and Instagram @sarahelizabethladd.

What you may not know about Sarah Ladd

As a teenager, Ladd ran a lawn mowing company handed off to her from her brother. She says one of the best smells in the world is fresh cut grass and she attributes that to running the lawn mowing company. 

“I’m a tomboy. Around our small town, I was like the handy woman. I also love nature and you can always find me in the Red River Gorge area hiking with my dog.”