A’Lelia Bundles is the author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker – a New York Times Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother – that was the inspiration for Self Made, a fictional four-part Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer.

She is chair emerita of the board of the National Archives Foundation and vice-chair emerita of Columbia University’s Board of Trustees. She is a member of the advisory boards of the March on Washington Film Festival and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She founded the Madam Walker Family Archives.

A’Lelia was an Emmy award-winning producer and news executive for thirty years at NBC News and then at ABC News, where she was Washington, DC deputy bureau chief and director of talent development. She has participated in writing residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell.