Sylvester Williams is walking his talk — literally — from California to Florida to raise awareness about the importance of mental wellness. Williams shared his story Saturday with the crowd […]
Deb Gruver
An Iowa native, Deb Gruver knew in third grade she wanted to be a newspaper reporter. She studied at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas and has worked at newspapers and magazines in Lawrence, Kansas; Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Terre Haute, Indiana. She was a reporter at The Wichita Eagle from 1999 to 2015 covering — at various times — police, consumer news, business news, the Statehouse and Sedgwick County government. She reviewed every child-in-need-of-care petition filed in Sedgwick County District Court during her last year as an Eagle reporter, writing a series entitled "In Need of Care" that shed light on child neglect and abuse. She won multiple awards for that series, including the Liberty Bell Award from the Young Lawyers Section of the Wichita Bar Association. She has served on the boards of the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government and the Kansas Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She has won national, regional and state awards in Kansas, Wyoming and Indiana for her reporting. Since 2015, she has worked as a lead communications strategist at a marketing agency, as director of communications at Trust Women Foundation and as a public affairs manager for the Kansas Department of Transportation. In 2019, she founded Word Scout Communications Solutions.
Deb left The Community Voice in August 2022 to a full time reporter role in McPherson County.
