Melissa Haizlip

As a Peabody Award-winning producer, director and writer, Melissa Haizlip’s work has been featured on Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock, CNN, PBS, and E! Her latest film, Satisfied, which she directed and produced for Steven Spielberg with Amblin Entertainment, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2024. Melissa’s work responds to pressing social issues at the intersection of racial justice, social justice, activism, and representation. In 2019, Melissa’s film Mr. SOUL! was a finalist for the inaugural Library of Congress Lavine / Ken Burns Prize for Film. A four-time NAACP Image Award Nominee, Melissa has been recognized with a writing achievement award from the NAACP Image Awards, and is the recipient of the 2020 Critics Choice Documentary Award for Outstanding Debut Feature for her film Mr. SOUL! The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018, aired on Independent Lens, PBS and is now streaming on MAX. Mr. SOUL! won the 2022 Peabody Award and the IDA Best Music Documentary Award, was nominated for a 2022 News & Documentary Emmy and shortlisted for the Oscars. The film received the International FOCAL Award for Best Use of Archival Footage in an Entertainment Production.

Melissa is Co-Executive Producer of the acclaimed 4-part limited series; Ladies First: A Story of Women In Hip-Hop for Netflix, and Executive Producer alongside Steph Curry of Black Pop: Celebrating the Power of Black Culture for Peacock. Her work has received generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation, among other esteemed organizations. She is part of the team that brought The Wiz musical revival back to Broadway. Melissa was born in Boston; grew up in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Connecticut, where she went to Yale. She is a member of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, and the Producers Guild of America. She lives and works in New York, where she serves on the Board of Directors of the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.