Board bio - Jacoba

Jacoba Atlas


Jacoba Atlas is an award winning writer and producer, with extensive experience as a broadcast executive, at NBC, Turner Broadcasting, CNN and PBS.

She is president of Creative Visions Productions, a multi-media company whose mission is to use media to inform, engage and inspire. CVP most recent project is “Extraordinary Moms”. It aired on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) in May and celebrated the power of mothers to change the world for the better. The 90 minute Special was hosted by Julia Roberts and featured Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Christiane Amanpour, along with less well known women who are having significant impact on the lives of children everywhere. CVP is currently developing “Prized Women”, a documentary film that examines the lives and commitment of the nine living women who have won the Nobel Peace Prize. “Prized Women” is being done with the support of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. CVP is also developing the feature film, “The Journey is the Destination” about the life of photojournalist Dan Eldon, who was killed at 22 while covering the conflict in Somalia for Reuters.

Jacoba Atlas is a filmmaker and broadcast executive with an extensive background in writing, directing and production. Atlas was a senior vice president for Content at PBS, overseeing the national schedule, representing 300 hours of annual programming. She was instrumental in bringing the Tony Hillerman mystery series to PBS (with executive producer, Robert Redford) as well as “American Family”, the first broadcast drama about a Latino family from executive producer, writer/director Gregory Nava. During her tenure, Bill Moyers’ award-winning news and information series, “Now with Bill Moyers” was developed, as were “Flashpoints” with Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill and “History Detectives”, now in its 10th season. Other significant projects: “Touching the Void,” “Auschwitz: Behind the Nazi State”, “African American Lives” with Henry Louis Gates and “A Lion in the House”. Under her guidance, “Art 21”, a series about contemporary artists and “Craft in America” were produced. Both are recipients of 2008 Peabody Awards.
More than 30 Emmys were awarded to PBS programs during her tenure; and three documentaries were nominated for Academy Awards.

Prior to joining PBS, Atlas was a vice president and writer and producer with CNN and Turner Broadcasting. In that capacity she was responsible for documentaries such as the Emmy and Peabody winning “Survivors of the Holocaust” with executive producer, Steven Spielberg, “The Last Days of King and Kennedy” with executive producer Oliver Stone, as well as the Emmy nominated “Dying to Tell the Story,” (also shorted listed for an Oscar nomination) about journalists in war-zones, “Soldiers of Peace” which chronicled the efforts of teenagers in Colombia to bring peace to that country, “The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful” about the image of women and the movies, and “The Coming Plague” from the Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book about infectious diseases and their impact on society.

She was also the creator, writer and executive producer of the landmark, Emmy nominated series, “A Century of Women” which aired on TBS and CNN. This series chronicled the accomplishments of American women in the 20th century; the archive for “A Century of Women” is now in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard.

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