PBS Summer 2020 Press Tour Panel Biographies

Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New Episodes of Season Six Continue Tuesdays Starting October 13, 2020 at 8:00 p.m. ET on PBS Season Seven Premieres Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 8:00 p.m. ET on PBS

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., executive producer, host and writer, is an Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker and literary scholar. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He has authored or co-authored 24 books and created 21 documentary films. His six-part PBS documentary series THE AFRICAN AMERICANS: MANY RIVERS TO CROSS (2013), which he wrote, executive produced and hosted, earned the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program — Long Form, as well as the Peabody Award, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and NAACP Image Award. Professor Gates also wrote, executive produced and hosted the Emmy Award-nominated two-part PBS documentary series BLACK AMERICA SINCE MLK: AND STILL I RISE (2016), chronicling the last 50 years of African American history in the U.S. In addition to the ongoing production of FINDING YOUR ROOTS, his most recent projects include the three-part PBS documentary series AFRICA’S GREAT CIVILIZATIONS (2017), the four-hour PBS history series RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR (2019), winner of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and the related books Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow with Tonya Bolden (Scholastic, 2019) and Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (Penguin Random House, 2019), a New York Times Notable Book of 2019. Having written for such leading publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times and Time, Professor Gates serves as chairman of TheRoot.com, a daily online magazine he co-founded in 2008, and chair of the Creative Board of FUSION TV. He oversees the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field, and has received grant funding to develop a FINDING YOUR ROOTS curriculum to teach students science through genetics and genealogy. The recipient of 56 honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a member of the first class awarded “genius grants” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998, he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He earned his B.A. in English language and literature, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge in 1979.

Kasi Lemmons, filmmaker and Season 7 participant As an actor, director, writer, producer, librettist, mentor, and educator, Kasi Lemmons is one of the most powerful voices of our time. Her first feature, Eve’s Bayou, is considered one of the essential works of the 1990s and was recently selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Her second film, The Caveman's Valentine, opened the 2002 Sundance Film Festival; her third film, Talk to Me, earned the 2008 NAACP Image Award for outstanding directing; and Fox Searchlight released her fourth film, Black Nativity, nationwide on Thanksgiving 2013. Last year, Lemmons premiered her fifth film, Harriet, starring Cynthia Erivo as the iconic freedom fighter. Her first libretto also premiered in Terence Blanchard’s 2019 opera, ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” She is an Arts Professor in the Graduate Film Department at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and is currently in development for The Shadow King, a feature film based on the critically acclaimed novel by Maaza Mengiste.

Zac Posen, fashion designer and Season 6 participant Zac Posen is an internationally acclaimed fashion designer and cookbook author, who appeared as a judge on the last six seasons of Emmy-nominated Project Runway. Zac, a lover of food and an inventive chef, gained an enormous following on Instagram where he showcases his cooking with the hashtag, #cookingwithzac, which led him to create his first cookbook “Cooking With Zac,” published by Rodale in October 2017. His recipes have been featured in Food & Wine magazine, Vogue.com, On The Table with Eric Ripert, Good Morning America, The Martha Stewart Show and The Chew. The documentary House of Z, chronicling Zac’s career, premiered at the 2017 TriBeCa Film Festival and is currently available on Netflix. Zac partnered with Delta Air Lines to re-design the iconic uniforms; his designs launched in 2018. Along with consistent support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the LGBTQIA community, and City Harvest, among others, Zac Posen is as an Ambassador for The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.