Live Class: 8 weeks between March 26 - May 21, 2025 11 am - 12pm ET

IIJ Spring 2025 Business of Freelancing Course

Learn the business of freelancing from IIJ founder Katherine Reynolds Lewis and multimedia entrepreneur Shernay Williams!
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About this class

  • Wednesday, March 26, 2025
    Wednesday, April 2, 2025
    Wednesday, April 9, 2025
    Wednesday, April 23, 2025
    Wednesday, April 30, 2025
    Wednesday, May 7, 2025
    Wednesday, May 14, 2025
    Wednesday, May 21, 2025
  • 8am - 9am PT / 11am - 12pm ET
  • Virtual
  • 8 x 1 hour classes
  • $249
  • Payment plans available at checkout. 
Over 8 weeks of live, interactive classes, you’ll develop a customized business plan and path to financial and emotional sustainability. Each week’s hour-long class will teach tools, resources and strategies for setting and achieving your goals as an independent journalist. By the end of the course, you’ll understand and be able to follow the IIJ’s 8 principles for sustainable freelancing.
In between classes, Katherine and Shernay will offer personalized feedback on pitches, draft emails, your network map, and more. This is not a pitch workshop. You’ll learn road-tested frameworks for landing assignments, launching an entrepreneurial venture, and making smarter decisions about how you spend your time, energy, and resources.
*You must have taken the IIJ’s business of freelancing course or workshop to enroll. (Experienced freelancers may apply for an exception to this policy, via a brief questionnaire about their freelance practice)

Key Takeaways

  • Katherine Lewis’s 3 P’s model (c) of structuring a freelance portfolio
  • How to track income and time easily and set achievable goals
  • What to negotiate for in addition to higher pay — and when to say no
  • Practical organization, time management, and mental health strategies
  • Other topics: effective networking, recruiting anchor clients, and identifying your brand and niche.

Requirements

You must have taken the IIJ’s business of freelancing course or workshop to enroll. (Experienced freelancers may apply for an exception to this policy, via a brief questionnaire about their freelance practice)

Who is this class for? 

While geared at people with a few years’ experience as entrepreneurs, even experienced journalists will pick up new ideas and tactics to take their practices to the next level — and newbies will launch freelance careers with open eyes and a wealth of resources and tools in their toolbelt.  
Meet the instructor

Katherine Reynolds Lewis

founder of the Institute for Independent Journalists

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning science journalist and author covering children, education, race, gender, disability, mental health, and social justice. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Elemental, Experience Life, Fortune, New York Times, Parade, Parents, Slate, USA Today, and Washington Post, among others. Her book on children’s behavioral and mental health, The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever – And What to Do About It, grew out of the most-read story Mother Jones has ever published. Katherine is the founder of the Institute for Independent Journalists, which supports freelancers of color. Fellowships include O’Brien Public Service Journalism, Medill Media Entrepreneur, and MIT Knight Science Journalism. She serves as special projects editor for Greater Good Magazine and directs the science of love project at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.

Katherine has been an adjunct journalism professor at American University and Northwestern University, and served as a guest lecturer in journalism at AU, Marquette University, Northwestern, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Southern California. A Harvard physics graduate, Katherine previously worked as a national correspondent for Newhouse and Bloomberg News, covering everything from work-life balance, psychology, financial and media policy, and technology to the White House. A biracial (White and Asian American) woman, she lives in the Washington D.C. area with her partner Brian and their three children.
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Meet the instructor

Shernay Williams 


Shernay Williams spent more than a decade as a journalist for television, radio, and print outlets throughout the South and East Coast before serving as a business coach, running a content firm, and in 2020, launching The ​Black Mompreneur. Recently Shernay became host and producer of a digital series for TheGrio called "A Taste of Chocolate," where she visits notable Black-owned restaurants to learn the stories behind their food.
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Partner 

Institute for Independent Journalists 

The Institute for Independent Journalists is an education, professional development, and mutual support organization for independent journalists, focusing on Black, Indigenous and people of color. Our mission is financial and emotional sustainability for independent journalists of color, through community learning, innovation and advocacy.

Our mission is to ensure financial and emotional sustainability for independent journalists of color, by:

Connecting freelancers for learning, collaboration and mutual support in a space that centers marginalized voices and facilitates authenticity and vulnerability.

Creating tools, services and shared wisdom for economic self-sufficiency and mental health, regardless of churn in journalism or who controls newsrooms. 

Advocating for fair and equitable treatment of freelancers and best practices for ethical use of independent labor, throughout the media.
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