Celeste Whittaker

Celeste E. Whittaker is a graduate of Willingboro High School.
Whittaker attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a full basketball scholarship and earned a B.A. in journalism.
After graduating, she worked at Business Week Magazine in New York for several years.
She began her sportswriting career at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1990 where she worked for nearly eight years. A big highlight was covering women’s basketball at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, as well as covering several women’s NCAA Final Four events and major college football.
Whittaker joined the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J. in 1998 where she was a sportswriter for the first 17 years covering the Philadelphia 76ers, college sports and high school girls sports. She joined the news department in 2015 and covers features and local news in Burlington County.
Two of her proudest accomplishments include having her first book published in 2009 entitled “The Epitome of Fatherhood: The Life of Chester M. Whittaker,” a biography on her late father’s life, and being inducted into the Albert J. Carino South Jersey Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 for her basketball playing career.
Whittaker has won multiple writing awards in her career, including earning first place in sports writing portfolio by the New Jersey Press Association.
She is the daughter of two former educators – the late Chester M. Whittaker and Dolores E. Whittaker -- so education plays a prominent role in her life
In her spare time, she enjoys reading, spending time with family and friends and mentoring at local schools with literacy programs and being a “mom” to her miniature poodle Prince.