About
Gini Sikes is a jack-of-all media: a director/screenwriter, print and broadcast journalist, 
web editor/writer with years of experience producing documentaries and penning stories on a wide range of subjects, from homeless kids in the US to alternative medical therapies in India.
Sikes has captured the inner lives of ingénues and prostitutes, priests and prisoners, vice cops and vice presidents, even drug mules and chimpanzees (they spoke sign language).
For MTVNews’ True Life documentary series, Sikes produced one-hour episodes on club drugs, youth violence, and teenage sexual health. She was nominated for a News Emmy for writing “Where Were You At 22?” a Rock The Vote election special that captured the lives of the 2000 presidential candidates when they were the age of MTV's viewers. She has produced documentaries for Investigative Discovery, VH1, PBS, Discovery Health, Court TV, Investigative Discovery, TLC and Voice of America radio.
She was an associate producer on the feature documentary by award-winning director Ilan Ziv, “Jesus Politics,” a look at how God entered the voting booth during the 2008 presidential race. In 2012 she teamed with Ziv on a six-part international television series for ARTE (French-German TV) about capitalism and the global economic crisis.
On the web Sikes helped create and launch, http://executionchronicles.org, a site connected to a documentary-in-progress about daily life on Texas death row.
Sikes was a senior editor/writer at the design magazine Metropolis, and at Mademoiselle, where each month she contributed an entertainment profile on the likes of Nicolas Cage, Jeremy Irons and Harrison Ford. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Vibe, Essence, The Washington Post, Glamour, Travel and Leisure among others.
She is the author of 8 Ball Chicks: A Year in the Violent World Of Girl Gangsters (Anchor/Doubleday), a journalistic chronicle of a year she spent with female gang members in three American cities. 8 Ball Chicks received favorable coverage in The New York Times Magazine, Elle, Glamour, MS, Kirkus, Publishers’ Weekly, Library Journal. During her countrywide tour Sikes appeared on TV and radio shows including Geraldo, Bill O’ Reilly, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
She currently contributes as producer/writer to the website ERAeducationproject.com, a non-profit, national multi-media campaign to let people know that equal rights under federal law still aren't a reality for American women — and to help fire up a new generation to reignite the battle for an amendment guaranteeing them in our Constitution.
Sikes is a producer and the co-writer of the documentary-in-progress, Equal Means Equal, a startling no-holds look at what it means to be a woman in the United States today.
Among her honors, Sikes was awarded a 2000-2001 Knight Fellowship from Stanford University. She earned a master’s from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she taught as an adjunct for a magazine writing course.
An intrepid traveler, Sikes has filmed and written in Russia, Finland, India, Dubai and elsewhere. Bi-coastal, she splits her time between New York City and Los Angeles.
John D. Knight Fellowship for 2000-01: for professional journalists, awarding $50,000 and an academic year to pursue study of choice at Stanford University.
2000 News Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing: for co-writing (and producing) MTV’s Where Were You at 22? a documentary about the youth of the presidential candidates when they were the age of MTV viewers.
2001 Batten Award For Excellence in Civic Journalism Honorable Mention: for co-writing (and producing) MTV’s Where Were You at 22?
Planned Parenthood Maggie Award: for exceptional achievement in media coverage of reproductive rights and health care issues for True Life: I Need Sex Rx.
Prism Commendation: for exceptional achievement in coverage of drug and alcohol abuse for True Life: I’m Hooked on OxyContin.