Barbara Harrison
Barbara Harrison is an award-winning journalist with more than three decades of writing, producing, reporting and anchoring experience at major television stations in New York, San Francisco, Dallas and Washington D.C.
She has been celebrated for her gift of creative storytelling, grabbing the viewers interest with stirring words and compelling video, in the many features she has written, produced and hosted. Her 2019 storytelling session at Yale University's annual THREAD conference this June garnered high praise from a room full of writers and journalists from around the country. Now, she wants to help you tell your stories – of people, places, causes, and events – in a way that will grab the audience and make them sit back and enjoy (or learn something they didn't know) about something that matters to you.
Among her many awards, Barbara was honored for Outstanding Achievement by the New York Film Festival for a report from the oil fields of Kuwait after the first Gulf War. She has garnered Emmy after Emmy – 19 in all – for programs she created as televised specials. Among the memorable is Living Legends, featuring interviews with Black history-makers including Aretha Franklin, Hank Aaron, Jessye Norman and Bobby Mitchell. She was front and center in covering the creation and opening of The Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian in 2004. Twelve years later, she chronicled the path of historian Lonnie Bunch in his mission to create the Museum of African American History and Culture.
While her interviews are a legend, there is no doubt that Barbara Harrison's most enduring legacy is a program she created to help children in foster care. The franchise, known as Wednesday's Child, is credited with finding permanent homes for hundreds of children in the Washington area. It has been the model for similar programs in major cities across the nation.
Although she grew up in Texas, Barbara began her career in television journalism as a writer-producer for WNET-TV in New York. A move to San Francisco also brought a move to the on-air side of the broadcast business. She became the host of popular radio shows on the ABC-owned stations KSFX and KGO-Radio. She returned to television with a move back to Texas, where she reported and anchored at KDFW-TV in Dallas. In 1980, she returned to San Francisco to anchor at KGO-TV. In the fall of 1981, she joined the staff at WRC/NBC4 in Washington. In addition to the many Emmys and countless other accolades for reporting, the Washington Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honored her with the Ted Yates Award for outstanding community service. She is the recipient of the prestigious Tufty Award for outstanding journalism from Washington.
