The 2006 Peabody Award winning CHISHOLM ’72 – Unbought & Unbossed is Shola Lynch’s directorial debut. She is currently developing and fundraising for a feature documentary project about Angela Davis and the events that catapulted her to international notoriety in 1970 – 72. In addition Lynch has produced and written pieces for BET and TV One as well as produced, written, and reported for CNN’s Anderson Copper 360.

Lynch learned the craft of documentary making on the job. She worked with Ken Burns and Florentine Films on the Peabody Award-winning Frank Lloyd Wright and the ten-part JAZZ series. She has also worked on the Emmy Award winning Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team, an HBO Sports documentary that is part of the Sports in the Twentieth Century series. At Orlando Bagwell’s ROJA Productions, she co-produced a documentary short about the 2000 Census and racial identity that was included in the last hour of the four-part series on race in America, Matters of Race, which aired on PBS in 2003. Recently Lynch has finished writing and producing pieces for BET as well as a short series on incarceration in America for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.

Lynch grew up in New York City, where she currently lives with her husband. She became part of the PBS family as a regular on Sesame Street from age 2-6. As a nationally ranked track athlete in the 800m and 1500m, she pursued her Olympic aspirations with the Lady Long Horns at the University of Texas while completing a Liberal Art Honors BA. Her most important life lesson derives from an athletic career that spanned 15 years of national and internationally competition. “The lesson is not one of being a champion but the payoff of perseverance in the pursuit of a goal,” she says.

Lynch also has a master’s degree in American history from the University of California, Riverside that culminated in a thesis and an exhibition at the California Museum of Photography titled “How Far Have We Come? Past and Present Images of African Americans.”

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