As our country approaches its 250th anniversary, creators and journalists share how they inform and entertain audiences with historical content via podcasts, documentaries, journalism, and entertainment programming. Learn how you can tell compelling stories about the past that resonate well beyond the classroom.
Salimah El-Amin, Producer, Florentine Films
For 25 years, Salimah El-Amin has worked on numerous award-winning films and television programs. Most recently, she served as a producer for The American Revolution, a six-part documentary series that examines America's war for independence and the founding of a nation. Other notable projects she has contributed to include Hemingway, College Behind Bars, The Vietnam War, Fahrenheit 9/11, Taxi to the Dark Side, The Blues, and The Trials of Henry Kissinger. She has received several awards for her work, including two Emmy Awards in research.
Salimah holds both bachelor's and master's degrees in Anthropology and Media Studies from Rutgers University, Columbia University, and The New School
Syreeta Gates, Founder and Archivist, The Gates Preserve and Most Incredible Studio
Raised in South Jamaica, Queens, with a camera in one hand and a Source magazine in the other, she’s been preserving the stories we live since before she knew it could be a career. She doesn't follow blueprints — she builds them.
She earned a degree in Urban Youth Culture from Hunter College (because she invented the major) and went on to NYU for her Master’s in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation. Then? She wrote her own ticket. Gates is the founder of The Gates Preserve, a company devoted to protecting the creative record and making sure the worlds we shape outlast us.
Her work lives across mediums. She’s led archival research and produced award-winning docs, including Netflix’s Ladies First, Peacock’s Black Pop, The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion, and A Ballerina’s Tale. Currently, she’s producing her first feature, Shaping the Culture—a definitive excavation of hip-hop journalism from Xerox to Twitter.
-
Syreeta was the first Black woman on LEGO® Masters (U.S. Season 2). Where she didn’t just build with bricks, she built Most Incredible Studio. This creative house crafts cultural compositions and collectible artifacts, transforming memories into experiences and intellectual property (IP) into tangible form.
She also foundedYo Stay Hungry—a live culinary competition where rap meets recipes and food becomes freestyle. Because when the format doesn’t exist, she invents it.
Gates has been featured in and has been recognized by The New York Times, Vogue, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Refinery29, Red Bull, and more. Her work lives on the page in books such as Fresh Fly Fabulous, BLK MKT Vintage, Stand Up!, The Quarter-Life Breakthrough and Creating Innovators.
Whether it’s a kit, a keynote, a documentary, or a dinner, Syreeta is a visionary, archival thinker, and cultural conductor. Her north star is always the same: How do we make memory visible? How do we create what’s missing? And how do we build a future worth remembering?
Dossie McCraw, Executive Producer, History That Doesn’t Suck with Professor Greg Jackson
Dossie McCraw has three decades experience in the entertainment industry beginning as a musician and later moving to the business side of “showbiz” holding leadership positions at HBO and Spotify. Every stage of his career across live theatre, music, TV and podcasts has been fueled by a passionate belief in the power of art to do more than merely entertain, but also to enrich our lives and bring us closer together.
Currently he is an independent producer of popular podcasts including: History That Doesn’t Suck with Professor Greg Jackson which tops the Apple and Spotify history podcast charts, tours nationally as a live stage show and will debut the “The Unlikely Union: A Storytelling Symphony of America” nationally on public television this summer in celebration of America 250; Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News & Information Podcast; Ye Gods! with Scott Carter distributed by the NPR podcast network and broadcast on public radio stations across the country.
-
Dossie also served as senior advisor to podcast startups Luminary Media, a global audio subscription streaming service dubbed “the HBO of podcasting,” and WaitWhat which produces the top entrepreneurship show and leadership summit Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman.
Earlier, from 2013 through 2018, Dossie was Global Head of Podcast Partnerships at Spotify where he led an international team that helped transition the previously music-only streaming platform into a multi-media company, beginning with the launch of video and podcasts on Spotify in 2015. This intrepid team tirelessly drove a strategy that grew from a startup project within the company to a core focus of the company today.
From 2001 to 2013, Dossie was Director of Program Planning and Audience Research at HBO. Before there was streaming and so called “peak TV,” there was HBO, the gold standard for premium entertainment. At HBO, he was privileged to work alongside some of the most talented artists and “suits.” From the first days of The Sopranos and Sex and the City, to The Wire and Game of Thrones, it was an invaluable education in both the creative and business aspects of entertainment where he learned the value of authentic storytelling from inspired creators, and the value of serving passionate audiences across a rich spectrum of culture and curiosity.
Dossie (dáwsy) holds a B.A. in History from the University of Lynchburg in Virginia where he also studied music and drama. He is a proud resident of The Garden State (IYKYK) outside New York City.
Moderator: Cameo George, Documentary Filmmaker
Cameo George is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, filmmaker and creative strategist with over 20 years of experience in both commercial and public media.
As the executive producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, PBS’ flagship and longest running history series, she has greenlit, developed and supervised the production of more than 35 full-length documentary films which have premiered at noted festivals including Toronto International Film Festival, DOC NYC and Venice and been recognized by prestigious journalism organizations including the Emmys, Peabody Awards, and duPont-Columbia Awards.
-
In the world of broadcast journalism and content development, Ms. George served as head of development for long-form projects at ABC News, where she was responsible for crafting a pipeline of docuseries and feature docs for Disney platforms.
Prior to ABC News, she served as head of digital video and TV at Ozy Media where she launched the digital media start-up’s television operations and oversaw the company’s daily video production output. In that capacity, she was the Executive Producer of OZY’s breakout television debut, 16 for ’16: The Contenders, a 16-part documentary series on the most influential presidential campaigns of the modern era. PBS aired The Contenders as a part of its primetime coverage in the lead-up to the 2016 election, and the show drove nearly 10M viewers on OZY’s own digital platforms.
At NBC News, Ms. George produced for Dateline NBC and MSNBC Special Projects, and she was selected to be a mentor for the NBC News Associates program, a long running initiative to train and hire journalists of color.
Notably, she spent a total of 12 years at CNN in Atlanta and New York, where she was a Senior Producer for the documentary unit overseeing production of the ground-breaking television series Black in America and Latino in America.
In 2024, Cameo George was named to The Root 100’s list of the Most Influential African Americans.
Presented with the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and BRIC Arts Media
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
The Center's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Accessibility: Center for Communication provides reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities. Requests for accommodations for Center for Communication events should be submitted at least two weeks before the date of the accommodation need. Please email community@centerforcommunication.org for assistance.
Have we helped you on your career journey?
In an effort to measure the impact of our work, we are reaching out to those of you who have engaged with the Center in some way and ask that you please take a moment to respond to our survey.
Upon completing the survey, you will be eligible to win one of several Amazon gift cards worth $50.