Pat Mitchell

Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of the Paley Center for Media with headquarters in New York and Los Angeles, believes in the power of media to influence, inform and inspire, and during her three decade career as a broadcast journalist, a documentary producer, and television executive, she has committed her talents to optimizing that power for positive social change.

Growing up in a small town in Georgia, television was Mitchell’s window on the world, and education was her ticket to discovering that world on her own as she became the first in her family to go to college.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Georgia with a BA and MA in English literature and drama, and after a three years of teaching and work towards her PhD, an opportunity to move to New York for a position on the popular weekly magazine, LOOK, motivated her to leave the security of academia and familiar surroundings and pursue big city journalism, a pursuit that ended abruptly when LOOK ceased publication the next year. Mitchell, now committed to the new career in journalism, decided to try television, ultimately landing some freelance assignments at NBC News and in 1972, moving to the NBC station in Boston as a writer/producer and ultimately on air reporter and news anchor.

Breaking new ground for women with nearly every position during those first years in television, Mitchell reported on US politics and Middle East conflicts and launched an all women’s talk program, becoming both producer and host, a dual role she also duplicated in Washington on a daily two hour live program, Panorama.

In the mid-eighties, Mitchell created a national talk series, Woman to Woman, the first national program to be hosted and produced by a woman. The series was awarded the Emmy for Most Outstanding talk program in 1983-84 and after national syndication, continued as a series on the NBC’s TODAY program and on LIFETIME cable network.

In 1990, Mitchell made the leap from network to independent producer, forming VU Productions to produce documentaries and specials focused on the issues of women and children around the world. VU’s first documentary series, which Mitchell produced and reported, was Women In War: Voices from the Frontlines, and resulted from Mitchell’s extended travel in the Middle East, Latin America and Northern Ireland for to document the unreported activities of women on both sides of these long term conflicts. Other documentaries she produced and reported (and which were broadcast on NBC, ABC, Lifetime and A&E) took up the global issues of child labor abuses, education, infant mortality and maternity health, and cultural and political oppression of women.

While producing a six hour documentary series on the history of women in America, (A Century of Women) Mitchell met Ted Turner who convinced her to bring the series to Turner Broadcasting and in the process of completing the series, Mitchell was hired by Turner to lead his documentary division, Turner Productions, which produced more than 100 hours of documentaries and specials each year for the Turner Cable Networks. Programs produced under her direction at Turner were awarded 44 Emmys for journalistic excellence, five Peabody Awards and two Academy Award nominations. Mitchell became President of Turner Original Productions and after the merger of Turner Broadcasting Company with Time Warner, she became the President of Time Inc. Television and CNN Productions, creating a new series for CNN (Newstand) and serving as Executive Producer of Cold War, a 24 hour documentary series and Millennium, a ten hour series documenting 100 years of world history.

In 2000, Mitchell was recruited to become President and Chief Executive Officer of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service in the US, the first woman and first producer and journalist to hold the position. Under Mitchell’s leadership, PBS led the digital transition of 355 local public television stations, secured more funding for the National Program Service, launched a high-definition PBS channel and a new cable preschool children’s service in partnership with Sesame Street and Comcast Cable; commissioned innovative and award winning public affairs series, and led the growth of PBS’s website (pbs.org) into one of the three most visited sites on the Internet. During her tenure, Mitchell was an active spokeperson for a strong and independent public media service in the US and other countries, and encouraged an alliance among global public broadcasters that led to new program partnerships and productions.

In 2006, Mitchell accepted the challenge of reinvigorating and repositioning the Museum of TV and Radio which she and her Board of Trustees, renamed the Paley Center for Media. With locations in both New York and Los Angeles, The Paley Center is considered the foremost convener of forums and programs that explore the role of media in all aspects of life and society. The Paley Center also convenes global media leaders through its International Media Council for meetings twice a year in the capital cities of its members throughout the world. These meetings bring together top level executives from more than two dozen countries, including China and the Middle East, to talk about the challenges and opportunities arising from a converging global media business in a ever more interconnected world.

With grants from major corporations and deep support from media companies across the media landscape…television, radio, internet, and advertising… Mitchell is evolving the Paley Center into THE center for all things media, the place where the conversations about the role of media and its power to influence, inform, inspire, and its potential to build bridges of understanding between cultures and countries is explored and celebrated.

Throughout her diverse career as a journalist, producer, and media executive, Mitchell has received numerous personal awards including Woman of the Year in Cable and Telecommunications, the CINE Golden Eagle for Lifetime Achievement, the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Leadership and recently was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. She is on the Hollywood Reporter’s Most Powerful Women’s List and is an active Board member and advisor to the VDAY campaign to end violence against women and girls, the US/Afghan Women’s council and Chair of the Jordan River Foundation USA Board.

She is also the Vice-chair of the Sundance Institute; founding board President of Global Green, USA, Mikhail Gorbachev's global environmental organization, a Trustee of the Mayo Clinic, and is an advisor to the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Harvard University. Mitchell is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

She and her husband, Scott Seydel, have six children and ten grandchildren and reside in New York and Atlanta, Georgia.

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