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Clean-up[]

This category has kind of slipped through the cracks for a long time. Most of these pages were created in 2006, and many of them aren't very notable under current wiki standards.

The description of the category said: "Presidents, vice presidents, advisory board members, educational consultants, and others involved in the Children's Television Workshop or its current incarnation, Sesame Workshop." -- which pretty much opens the door to every single person who's worked for CTW/Sesame Workshop in the last 40 years.

I just changed the description to specify that the category is for people "who have contributed significantly to the development of Sesame Street."

There are some people here who clearly belong in that category. Joan Ganz Cooney, Edward L. Palmer, Gary Knell, Rosemarie Truglio, Anna Jane Hays and Christopher Cerf have nice pages. I think that Lewis Bernstein, Gerald S. Lesser and Jane O'Connor are all interesting people who could be built up at some point by somebody with the time and inclination to do so. Now that Street Gang has been published, we've got a lot more material that can help us flesh out some of the key contributors.

But some of the people in this category have pages just for the sake of having pages. I would say these are the unnecessary pages:

  • Nina Elias Bamberger: Producer/executive producer on a lot of specials and videos. She's worked on a lot of projects... but is that a significant contribution worthy of a page? I'm ambivalent. Andrew created this page.
  • Robert A. Hatch: Helped to solicit financial support in the early days; became VP for public affairs in 1972. I think Nick created this page in 2006 based on an obituary, because Hatch had recently died.
  • Anna E. Housley-Juster: Created by an anon, reads like an official bio. Part of the research team.
  • Nancy Kanter: Producer on a couple direct-to-video specials, now Senior VP at the Disney Channel. Created by Nick; I don't see why we care.
  • Valeria Lovelace: Assistant VP of Research. Created by an anon.
  • Jodi Nussbaum: Group VP of Television, Film and Home Video. Created by George.
  • Joel Schneider: Content director for Square One TV, page reads like an official bio. Created by an anon.
  • Sherrie Rollins Westin: Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer. Created by Nick.

Any objections to deleting these extra pages? -- Danny (talk) 06:22, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you read Bamberger, you'll see she also created Big Bag, which regardless of one's thoughts about the actual show, is pretty relevant and not insignificant (she also story edited or wrote various segments thereof; I stumbled upon a tape from the first season somewhere in my mountainous pile from a single summer, so at some point I can add specifics). I'm pretty sure I have a lot more to add, it's just not a page I've looked at in ages. But Category:Producers is a different discussion anyway, with pages of varying relevance (I know a lot of those were created just because of a redlink, for example, and includes some which are "line producers" and so on). George added the category. My feeling is if they don't have a specific creative contribution that fits in another category, or they're one of the pioneering figures where we have a lot of information and specifics on precisely how they shaped Sesame Street (and not necessarily CTW as a larger organization), they're not relevant. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 06:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, that's why I said I was ambivalent about Bamberger. If you dig it, then it's fine with me. I'd like to clear out the other pages, though. -- Danny (talk) 06:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
I think it's less about digging the page than that it is a tangible contribution to a Muppet/Creature Shop/Henson show. We have pages for a lot of creators and writers, some with about as much info (and a couple short but decent paragraphs isn't exactly nukeworthy in my view), even if someone else hates the show in question (and somewhere, I have some quotes about her work on the Sesame videos, since the "executive producer" credit literally meant she conceived and spearheaded several of those series). I'll try to dig up that old discussion on production crew, though, since it really comes down to which of these are essentially equivalent to the hair dressers, but with Phds or VP titles, in terms of what they actually did (if we ever find out that somebody, say, also wrote a documentary about Cookie Monster and body acids, that would justify a page much better). As long as we're on the subject, the same applies to Category:Henson Company Staff, started for the same reason, but with similar "So and so was VP in charge of this for this period" pages. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 06:41, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
It's tricky, because really, it's not about judging the individual person or the job that they do. I want to be careful about that, because I don't want to be disrespectful to a person who probably does a fantastic job that we know practically nothing about. I'm sure that as Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer, Sherrie Rollins Westin has done a lot of really interesting things, and made important decisions that affected things that we care about. But right now, we don't have access to that information, so we're left with a very boring four-sentence page, only one of which is about Sesame.
So, yeah, we can also take a look at Producers and Henson Company Staff, with the same view of: which of these is actually an interesting page for us right now? -- Danny (talk) 07:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I looked up the 2007 discussion on Miscellaneous Crew positions, and added it to Policies and Guidelines. I think the staff situation is pretty clear.

Producers and writers are more tricky, since we said in the Misc Crew discussion that "creative" jobs get pages. But like you said, some of the producers pages are just based on one credit, and not relevant. Should we have a big discussion about "people" pages? If so, should we move this to Current events? -- Danny (talk) 20:20, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Moving to Current Events is fine, though I'm not sure if it affects anything other than Henson Staff and producers necessarily, in terms of a widespread thing. A lot of the writer and director pages can stand to be improved, but they generally have a lot more that can be expanded in terms of careers, quotes, interviews, etc. Some of the producers are shadowier figures, but it's something we can examine a case by case basis. Also, this didn't occur to me before, I think because of the way this conversation started, but while we'd probably want to set standards, the simplest solution to Sesame Workshop "staff" that don't fit in otherwise, would be just to create a list. Directors in charge of research, VPS of whatever, etc., and we can merge their staff bios there. Since we had decided to prioritize tangible creative jobs, and I think that still makes sense (and doesn't disrespect anyone who just doesn't fit), *but* you're right in that most of these folks are more important than the wardrobe mistress pages we had back then. I'm not sure it would work with the Henson issue, since with many of those, they were hired and fired and "in charge of development" without anything really emerging, in which case we have no idea whether they could have been working on something Muppety or Creaturey, or some proposed live action sitcom. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 22:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, we're agreed on the stuff for this category, so we can move on to Henson Staff and Producers next. I'll delete the ones listed above, except for Bamberger. -- Danny (talk) 06:56, 4 January 2009 (UTC)



Archive[]

Sherrie Rollins Westin[]

2009gala-David Westin and Sherrie Rollins Westin

Sherrie Rollins Westin is currently the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Sesame Workshop.

The US Senate unanimously confirmed Westin as the first Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As of 1992, Westin was Assistant to the President for Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs. This made her one of the highest ranking women under the President George Bush Sr.'s administration.

In 1994, Westin became Executive Vice President of Network Communications at the ABC Television Network, a position she held until 1998.

Joel Schneider[]

Dr. Joel Schneider joined CTW in 1983, beginning as a project director in the software division. In 1987, he became the content director for Square One TV, a daily children's television series on math.

Schneider, who was born in Lebanon, Pa., began his career studying mathematics. While teaching mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, he started working with prospective elementary school teachers which led him to concentrating on mathematics education. Joel Schneider passed away of cancer at the age of 61 on September 12 2004.

CTW has established the Joel Schneider International Research Fund for Global Health to honor his passion and work on the Workshop's global health initiative.

Jodi Nussbaum[]

Jodi Nussbaum serves as Sesame Workshop's Group Vice President of Television, Film, and Home Video. Her biography at Sesame Workshop's official website describes her as "responsible for overseeing development and production on new and existing properties at Sesame Workshop."

Nussbaum has worked for Sesame Street, Dragon Tales, Sagwa The Chinese Siamese Cat, and Out There. She started out at Children's Televsion Workshop as a producer for the live-action series Ghostwriter.

External Links

Valeria Lovelace[]

Donahue31

Valeria Lovelace was the assistant vice president of Sesame Street Research and the Children's Television Workshop.

Nancy Kanter[]

Nkanter

Nancy Kanter is Senior Vice President, Original Programming, Disney Channel, since October 2004.

She was the co-executive producer of Elmo's Musical Adventure: Peter and the Wolf, and executive producer of Elmo Says BOO! and Elmopalooza. In addition, she has produced Afterschool Specials for ABC and won an Emmy Award for film editing.

Anna E. Housley-Juster[]

Anna E. Housley-Juster has been a part of the Education and Research team at Sesame Workshop for over 5 years. She currently serves as Assistant Content Director where she writes the curriculum for Sesame Street and oversees content for the Sesame Street brand. Ms. Housley-Juster works closely with producers and writers to ensure that the curriculum objectives are effectively incorporated into all aspects of Sesame Street. Ms. Housley-Juster has her Masters degree in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University in both Child Development and English. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Early Childhood and Elementary Education at New York University.

Robert A. Hatch[]

Robert A. Hatch (1931-2006) was a journalist and public relations liaison who served as account executive for Children's Television Workshop in 1969. In that capacity, he helped solicit financial support for Sesame Street. In 1972, he became CTW's vice president for public affairs.

Charlotte Cole[]

CharlotteColeSW

Dr. Charlotte Cole is the Vice President for International Education, Research and Outreach at Sesame Workshop in New York. She oversees the research and curriculum development for the International Sesame Street co-productions. Working with educators and production teams throughout the world, she has most recently been engaged in projects in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Israel, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, West Bank/Gaza.