Patricia Thompson (August 14, 1947December 20, 2010) was a

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

-based

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television producer and documentary filmmaker.

Biography

Thompson began her career at the NBC Chicago station

WMAQ-TV WMAQ-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Telemundo outlet WSNS-TV (chan ...

in the 1970s. She later moved to Paris in 1975 to work as a radio reporter and then became a senior producer for

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

in Europe, covering the revolutions in Iran and the Philippines; the marriage and death of Diana, Princess of Wales; and the Soviet-American disarmament negotiations. She later created her own production company, producing programs and documentaries for American networks and cable channels, and covering news events such as the celebrations of the bicentennial of the French revolution. Her documentary ''The Cheese Nun'', a profile of Sister Noella, a Benedictine nun who upon being made cheese-maker of her abbey in Connecticut, studied microbiology and crisscrossed France to study cheeses, was broadcast by

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

in the United States in 2006. Thompson won two

Emmy award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

s for her work in Africa and the United States. She was also the French producer for a segment of the CBS show ''

The Amazing Race ''The Amazing Race'' is an adventure reality game show franchise in which teams of two people race around the world in competition with other teams. The ''Race'' is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselves in forei ...

''.

Education

She graduated from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

in 1969 and earned a master's degree in urban studies and law at

Loyola University Chicago Loyola University Chicago (Loyola or LUC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Cathol ...

in 1973. In addition to her career as a TV and film producer, she was a professor of Global Communications at the

American University in Paris The American University of Paris (AUP) is a private, independent, and accredited liberal arts university in Paris, France. Founded in 1962, the university is one of the oldest American institutions of higher education in Europe, and the first to ...

from 1997 where she created a program on video news production.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Patricia 1947 births 2010 deaths Emmy Award winners Loyola University Chicago alumni University of Illinois alumni American expatriates in France