Kathleen Hughes’ latest work, directed and produced with Tom Casciato for the PBS Frontline series, is “Two American Families 1991-2024,” a film the New York Times called “a knockout documentary” and “a master work.” Before that Kathleen most recently directed and produced, with Abigail Disney, the 2022 Sundance Film Festival documentary The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales. The Hollywood Reporter called the film “an extremely powerful, timely and important statement.”
Kathleen is also the executive producer of “All Ears With Abigail Disney,” Fork Films’ weekly podcast featuring innovative, women change-makers. In 2015, also with Disney, she produced and co-directed the Emmy Award-winning feature documentary, “The Armor of Light”, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. With Tom Casciato, Kathleen produced and directed the 90-minute PBS Frontline special “Two American Families,” in July of 2013 which The New Yorker wrote would “take its place among the central documents of our time.” Posted on YouTube in 2021, the film has over 1.4 million views.

From 2008-11, Kathleen served as the executive producer of WNET’s multi-platform series Blueprint America, where she oversaw the creation of reports about America’s crumbling infrastructure for a wide range of public media outlets including PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, Bill Moyers’ Journal, Now on PBS, and Need To Know. In 2007 she directed the Emmy Award-winning “Buying The War” with Bill Moyers , which The Washington Post called “one of the most gripping and important pieces of broadcast journalism this year.” Over the years, Kathleen has produced, directed and written many additional Moyers documentaries, as well as films for PBS’s Frontline and ABC News’ Turning Point. She is also the recipient of numerous awards including four national Emmys, a New York Emmy, the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton, the Gracie Award, the Sidney Hillman Prize, the Dateline Club’s Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award, the Harry Chapin Media Award, the Christopher Award, and honorable mention for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She holds a masters in journalism from Columbia University.