About the Filmmakers

roundtable discussion between six people
Thomas D. Lehrman, Executive Producer

Thomas D. Lehrman is Managing Partner of Teamworthy Ventures. Mr. Lehrman was formerly co-founder and former Co-Chief Executive Officer of Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and has been involved as a founding or seed investor in numerous early stage ventures. Mr. Lehrman previously served as a Director of the Office of WMD Terrorism at the U.S. Department of State and as a member of the professional staff on the President’s WMD Commission. Earlier in his career, he worked as a financial analyst at Tiger Management. Mr. Lehrman has been a Board Member of several educational institutions including KIPP NYC Public Charter Schools, Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Mr. Lehrman graduated from Duke University and Yale Law School and his writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

For fifty years, historian and journalist Richard Brookhiser has covered everything from the Jamestown Colony to pandemics past and present. He is the biographer of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln. Most recently, he was the author of “Glorious Lessons: John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution.” He is a senior editor of National Review and a columnist for American History. In 2008 he was awarded the National Medal for the Humanities. He was also the writer and narrator of the documentary, “John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court.”

John Paulson is a veteran creator of documentaries, biographies, and performing arts specials, many of them for public television. Currently he is completing a film on Virgil Thomson, a composer who ranks alongside Copland and Bernstein as a 20th Century master and who more than anyone else originated the American sound in classical music. Paulson produced the television specials, Mister Rogers: It’s You I Like, a Primetime Emmy Award nominee, What the World Needs Now: Words by Hal David, and JFK: The Lost Inaugural Gala, featuring long-lost footage from the 1961 pre-inaugural concert. He also directed A Raisin in the Sun Revisited, celebrating the legacy of Lorraine Hansberry, and the classical concert program, HOMECOMING: The Kansas City Symphony & Joyce DiDonato. Paulson’s critically acclaimed American Masters biography, Les Paul Chasing Sound, in addition to its Primetime Emmy nomination, also received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Paulson spent more than a decade with the Smithsonian Institution where he produced award-winning media for museum exhibition and television broadcast. Among his work was the acclaimed film, Woody Guthrie Legacy, and a trio of programs celebrating the 300th anniversary of the invention of the piano: the concert special Piano Grand!, the documentary People and Pianos: 300 Years, and the exhibit film Piano 300. His programs for Maryland Public Television capturing the diverse landscapes and cultures of the Chesapeake Bay region have earned eleven Emmy Awards (NCCB). Paulson is a member of the Director’s Guild of America, and teaches Filmmaking for Public Television in the graduate School of Communication, American University, Washington, D.C.

Leo Eaton was an Emmy award-winning filmmaker who wrote, produced, directed and executive produced TV series and specials for U.S. and foreign broadcasters for more than three decades. Most recently, Eaton produced, directed and co-wrote the theatrical documentary John Marshall, the Man Who Made the Supreme Court. Previously, he executive produced the PBS/BBC 6-part series Story of China and wrote and directed the PBS special Weekend in Havana (all these projects incorporate the ‘history in the present’ narrative style). Other notable work for PBS includes Arts & the Mind, Homeland: Immigration in America and In Search of Ancient Ireland. Eaton produced National Geographic Channel’s Emmy® award-winning Can the Gulf Survive about the BP oil spill, executive produced The Story of India for PBS & BBC-TV, produced PBS’s groundbreaking 21-hour series America at a Crossroads, and co-created the Canadian/US Emmy® award-winning children’s series Zoboomafoo among many other works. Eaton passed away in March 2022.

Mr. Griffin is an award winning cinematographer and director for films that have won the Academy Award, Emmy Award and the Sundance Cinematography Award. Some of his films include: Listopad: Three Boys and a Revolution, Educating Peter (Academy Award 1992), Autism is a World (Academy Award nominee 2005), The Education of Shelby Knox (Sundance Cinematography Award, 2005), Ms Sharon Jones (TIFF 2015), Desert One (TIFF 2019), Lift (Tribeca 2022), In Search of Ancient Ireland, Arts & the Mind and Weekend in Havana. Mr. Griffin holds an MFA from Prague’s FAMU Film Academy and has taught at the University of Johannesburg, The Prague Film School, Hunter College and as Artist in Residence at the American University in Washington, D.C. He lives with his wife Alice in New York City.

Barbara Ballow is an award-winning DC-based editor who has been telling compelling stories for more than three decades.  Ballow has cut many of Leo Eaton’s documentaries, including John Marshall, the Man Who Made the Supreme Court, Weekend in Havana, Sacred Journeys, Arts & the Mind, In Search of Ancient Ireland and Emmy® award-winning Can the Gulf Survive.  Ballow’s work includes programs for Frontline and America at a Crossroads for PBS, Autism is a World for CNN (nominated for an Academy Award), multiple specials and series for National Geographic Channel, and also The Kennedy Center Honors, for which she also won an Emmy. 

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