Investigative reporter Kani’ya Davis knows what she wants and is going to get it

October 22, 2025

By: Anthony Payne

Kani’ya Davis, once a shy high-schooler filling orders at Chick-fil-a, is now a daily news intern at WUNC and an MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow. This fall, she returned from Accra, Ghana – where she self-produced a documentary – to complete her senior year at North Carolina A&T State University. She’s learned that it’s in her power to get what she wants, and has taken every step to find out what that is.

As a self-described introvert in high school, Kani’ya was drawn to documentaries but didn’t believe out-of-state college was financially feasible. But in her senior year, she began to challenge those limits—applying for dozens of scholarships and ultimately enrolling at North Carolina A&T.

“I was like ‘you know what? I’m going to do what I want to do,’” Kani’ya reflects. “I’ve had so many experiences that I wouldn’t even have considered possible back then. Coming to A&T and pushing myself to take what I want out of this life has definitely been crazy.”

As a college freshman, her appreciation for storytelling led her to her campus paper, The A&T Register, where she worked her way up to a staff reporter position. Now, she’s now focused on the education and health reporting beat, working towards becoming an investigative reporter and doing things she never thought possible.

This year, Kani’ya joined the Student Reporting Labs team as part of the first cohort of climate reporting fellows. Her team flew to the nation’s capital, where they produced a story on a sustainable fashion initiative at Howard University. Their story was published on the PBS News YouTube Channel as part of the Second Nature digital series.

“Health journalism has really gotten my attention, especially after doing this documentary with PBS and seeing how climate change and health can intersect,” Kani’ya says. “The biggest thing that I took away from that was seeing how people are doing real things in their community. Even though these issues feel so much larger than us, we can do little things in our own personal lives to make a change.”

She followed that thread this summer, studying abroad in Accra, Ghana. There, she independently produced a short documentary on textile pollution in West Africa – writing, shooting, and editing the doc herself. She describes this as her proudest moment.

Kani’ya admires reporters who use stories to improve their communities and affirm that we each have the agency to improve what we want to see fixed. Right now, she’s working on an investigative project about student housing in Greensboro, hoping to effect change in her own community. 

“I’m currently taking Nikole Hannah-Jones’ investigative reporting class and learning from the speakers she brings in every Monday has been super inspiring,” says Kani’ya. “It reminds me that even though things don’t look so great in our country right now, the field that I’m going into has the power to change everything that I feel anxiety about. That’s definitely what keeps me inspired and keeps me going.”

A longtime admirer of Zora Neale Hurston, Kani’ya is inspired by her interpersonal, research-driven storytelling. Kani’ya is motivated by Huston’s refusal to accept the circumstances life foists upon people, and encourages others to do the same.

“If I were speaking to someone who is in a similar place as I was – a low-income Black girl – I would definitely tell her that this world makes you feel like you’re powerless. But you have so much more power than you think. And any conditions that you want to change in your life, you have the power to do so.”

Re-reading her old diary entries has shown her that she’s been on this journey for longer than she’s known.
“I’ve literally been journaling since I was 12 years old,” Kani’ya recalls. “And during those times when I was just writing down my hopes and dreams, I didn’t really realize what I was doing. Going back and seeing those entries once you’ve gotten it, that just proves that you do have the power. Even if it’s something small. I was rereading my journals from high school, like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sick of depending on people for a ride, I just want my own car!’ I bought my first car last summer. All your hopes and desires will come true eventually, and you’ll have proof of that.”