A’Lelia Bundles is the author Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance (Scribner, June 2025), the first major biography of her great-grandmother, and of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother that was adapted into a Netflix series.
She is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives and serves on several nonprofit advisory boards including Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, BIO (Biographer’s International), Columbia Global Reports, Indiana Landmarks, and the Women’s Suffrage National Monument. A former network television news executive and Emmy Award winning producer at ABC News and NBC News, she is a former chair of the National Archives Foundation and a former vice chair of Columbia University’s board of trustees. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She frequently speaks at universities, conferences and corporations. Her articles and essays have been published in the New York Times Book Review, TheUndefeated.com, Variety, Ms., O Magazine, Essence and several encyclopedias and books.