A Shift in Focus
Hassett Sanchez delivered the Annual MPJI Spring Lecture before a screening of her documentary film “More Art Upstairs.”
Jody Hassett Sanchez is president of Pointy Shoe Productions, a documentary and long-form TV production company. Her latest documentary, More Art Upstairs, had its world premiere at Hot Docs, the largest documentary film festival in North America. The film was just selected to be part of the State Department’s American Film Showcase, so Jody will be screening the film around the world as a cultural ambassador for the US next fall.
She covered religion, culture, and education for ABC’s World News Tonight and filed stories for Nightline. Prior to joining ABC News, Hassett Sanchez traveled the globe as CNN’s State Department producer, reporting on everything from democratic elections in Mongolia to refugee resettlement in Macedonia.
She served as a senior producer of CNN’s Cold War Postscript, a 24-part weekly program examining connections between the history of the Cold War and global affairs today. She was part of the CNN team that won a national Emmy award for breaking news coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing and the ABC team that won a national Emmy for 9/11 coverage.
A graduate of Smith College, Jody lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband George, a journalist and fine arts photographer and their son Sebastian Beck who was born in Kazakstan.