ABOUT MICHELLE

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Michelle Génecé Patterson is a Peabody and six-time Emmy Award winning content innovator and television news producer with extensive brand management, content strategy, broadcasting and production experience in digital/streaming, network, and cable TV news and documentaries. 

An innovator of Prize Philanthropy, Michelle's media and marketing skills are uniquely matched by her exceptional experience as a grantor in philanthropy and assessing non-profit sustainability. She is a passionate and detail-oriented professional, committed to bridging the gaps to social change through leveraging access, information, and resources. Today, she helps people and organizations find their voice through content creation, content strategy and effective storytelling.

As a Senior Producer for CNN Heroes, she oversaw editorial content, managing the campaign's storytelling and helping cultivate its content strategy while also helping to manage a production team of 11. This cross-platform, multi-network, global initiative recognized and honored everyday people whose positive works help to change the world. Now a global brand in its eighteenth year, she produced impact storytelling that broadened and deepened audience engagement. Leveraging the power and reach of high-profile talent, she amplified the voices of diverse and marginalized individuals and communities. 

During her tenure, she also supervised story selection, vetting and verification, and production—including budgeting, writing and editing, staff assignments and cross-network coordination for the campaign. Michelle also served as liaison to CNN's Standards & Practices and Legal departments and as Anderson Cooper and Kelly Ripa’s producer for the Emmy-winning annual tribute special, “CNN Heroes: An-All Star Tribute.” In 2020, she was selected as an inaugural member of Take the Lead: 50 Women Can Change the World in Journalism, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

Michelle broadened the scope and impact of the CNN Heroes Award by cultivating a ten-year collaboration with the Annenberg Foundation, which provided non-profit sustainability and leadership training to CNN Heroes. She then led a new collaboration with The Elevate Prize Foundation, whose mission is to amplify changemakers and drive meaningful impact, growing their campaign investment to $1.2 million in two years. This partnership has helped CNN Heroes honorees sustain their good work and strengthen their abilities to leverage the exposure, opportunities and resources awarded to them.

Prior to launching and managing the storytelling for CNN Heroes, Michelle served as a Producer for ABC News for nearly a decade, producing breaking news, features, long form and pilots for several broadcasts, including World News Tonight, Nightline, and Good Morning America. She covered every major news story prior to 9/11, including the 1996 and 2000 Presidential campaigns. She also served as Broadcast Producer for the live, 24-hour special Millennium 2000 and was the youngest person at the time to be promoted to Producer at ABC News. 

Throughout her career, Michelle has developed a reputation for accessing and giving voice to hard-to-reach populations and reluctant subjects, including young people, and for treating them fairly and respectfully. 

As a media professional committed to education, she has taught television news production and script writing as an adjunct professor at The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she also earned a Master of International Affairs from Columbia’s School of International & Public Affairs and specialized in International Media & Communications and Africa and the Caribbean. 

She received a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from Stanford University and a certificate of study at Oxford University where she studied colonialism and nationalism. 

A native of Boston, MA, she is proud of her Haitian descent, which has informed her ability to bring visibility to underrepresented voices on the global stage. She currently resides in Yonkers, NY with her family.