Christina Kahrl is the 2023 recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Award. Kahrl has been the sports editor for The San Francisco Chronicle since 2021, where she became one of the few women ever named to lead a sports section for a major daily newspaper, and the first transgender woman. Previously, she served first as a senior editor for MLB, and later national sports coverage at ESPN.com. In her brief time with The Chronicle, the section has already received multiple nominations and awards for its columnists, investigative reporting, news breaking and digital coverage of sports.
Kahrl came out publicly as transgender in 2003, becoming the first out trans sports journalist in the U.S. She has been a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America since 2009, having launched her career in 1996 as one of the founding members of the revolutionary online baseball think tank, Baseball Prospectus. Beyond her career in sports journalism, Kahrl has also worked as an advocate for civic equality for transgender Americans, helping to reform Chicago police policy on transgender individuals, training police departments throughout the Midwest in cooperation with the Department of Justice, and writing on trans issues in mainstream society and sports for numerous outlets. She has served on the boards of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, GLAAD and Equality Illinois, and was previously elected to both the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, the Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame and the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists Hall of Fame.