Kathleen Hughes

An award-winning producer, director, and writer, Kathleen first teamed up with Abigail E. Disney as the co-director and producer of The Armor of Light, which premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. It won an Emmy and was shortlisted for a 2017 Peabody Award. On the subject of inequality, she spent more than 21 years as a director, producer, and writer on the award-winning series of Bill Moyers/PBS Frontline films tracking two families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as they struggled to hold on in an economy that no longer rewards hard work. The final installation was called Two American Families. From 2008-11 she served as the Executive Producer of WNET’s multi-platform series Blueprint America. At Blueprint, she oversaw the creation of reports about America’s crumbling infrastructure for a wide range of public media outlets including PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, Bill Moyers’ Journal, Now on PBS, and Need To Know. Her Emmy Award-winning, 90-minute PBS/Bill Moyers investigation into the media’s coverage of the Bush Administration’s case for invading Iraq, “Buying The War” was called “one of the most gripping and important pieces of broadcast journalism this year” by the Washington Post. She has produced, directed, and/or written many Moyers documentaries, as well as films for PBS Frontline and ABC News Turning Point.

Her awards include three national Emmys, a New York Emmy, the duPont- Columbia Gold Baton, the Gracie Award, the Sidney Hillman Prize, the Dateline Club’s Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award, the Harry Chapin Media Award, the Christopher Award, and honorable mention for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She holds a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.