ABOUT MICHELLE

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Michelle Genece 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. As a creator and cultivator of the CNN Heroes

campaign, now a global tradition in its eighteenth year, I have particular excellence in impact storytelling, broadening and deepening audience engagement, producing high-profile talent, and amplifying the voice of diverse and marginalized individuals and communities. 

My media and marketing skills uniquely combine with exceptional experience as a grantor in philanthropy and assessing non-profit sustainability. I am a passionate and detail-oriented professional, committed to being a bridge to access, information, and resources for social change. I currently help organizations find their voice with regard to content creation, content strategy and effective storytelling.

As a Senior Producer for the cross-platform, multi-network, global initiative CNN Heroes which recognizes and honors everyday people whose positive works help to change the world, I oversaw editorial content and helped manage a production team of 11. I supervised story selection, vetting and verification, 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.”

I 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. I 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, I 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. I covered every major news story prior to 9/11, including the 1996 and 2000 Presidential campaigns, the former as an off-air reporter covering the Patrick Buchanan campaign, the latter as George Stephanopoulos’ producer. I also served as Broadcast Producer for the 24-hour special Millennium 2000. The youngest person at the time to be promoted to Producer at ABC News, I have 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. I have particular experience developing new on-air talent and exclusively produced Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopoulos, among others, while at ABC. I have taught television news production and script writing as an adjunct professor at The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and have a Master of International Affairs from Columbia’s School of International & Public

Affairs, where I specialized in international media & communications. I also received a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from Stanford University and a certificate of study at Oxford University where I studied colonialism and nationalism. In 2020, I was selected as an inaugural member of Take the Lead: 50 Women Can

Change the World in Journalism, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

A native of Boston, MA, I am proud of my Haitian descent, which has informed my ability to bring previously unseen “others" to the global table, and currently reside in Yonkers, NY with my husband and young daughter.