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

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

-based American 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, serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Telemundo station WSNS-TV (chann ...

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 Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

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 broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

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 television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...

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 competition franchise in which teams of two people race around the world in competition with other teams. ''The Amazing Race'' is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselv ...

''.

Education

She graduated from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

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 university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic Church, ...

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 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