Biographie
Donna Kanter, a writer, producer, and director, owns The Kanter Company, Inc. She has been instrumental in launching 14 reality series and directed the pilot of Rescue 911 (CBS). Donna created FBI: The Untold Stories (ABC), the first drama-reality hybrid series, as well as Inside The Yellow Line (TruTV) and Cold Case Cops (Discovery). She has produced numerous pilots featuring unique crime stories, including a 2010 presentation on a special FBI team for A&E. Currently, she is developing The E Team and writing the feature Friends for Life.
In 2008, Donna wrote and directed F.L.I.P. Mysteries, a show about Internet private investigators for WE tv, and the documentary LUNCH, which highlights seven comedy writers and the waitress who often interrupts their punchlines. She is now directing a sequel to LUNCH featuring 12 television legends. Among her more than 25 nonfiction credits are Pope John Paul II's Vatican, The White House: Inside the Gates, Lucy: Queen of Comedy, Secrets of the Circus, U.S. Missiles, and transportation crimes (Discovery); four seasons of Badge of Courage (TruTV); Save Our Streets and the pilot Payback (NBC). She also serves as executive producer and writer for three movies of the week: Aftermath (CBS), The Flood, and The Last Victim (NBC).
Raised among comedy writers and publishers, Donna initially focused on labor and investigative reporting at KING-TV Seattle and Newsweek. She later became ABC's foreign editor and senior producer for David Brinkley. Her collaborations with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have granted her exclusive access to some of the most extraordinary investigative cases, units, and personal stories of our era.
Donna graduated from UC Berkeley and earned her M.A. from the University of Florence in Italy and Middlebury College. She taught Italian at UCLA and was admitted to Yale for doctoral studies on the Italian Resistance but left academia to work with Ralph Nader and the FCC.
As a member of the DGA Workshop, Donna wrote and directed Friends for Life, inspired by the 2009 Paulist Press book she edited about feature-film stillman Louis Goldman and the Italian cardinal and priests who saved his life during WWII.
She is a two-time Emmy winner, an honoree of the AFI's Directing Workshop for Women, and a member of the WGA, DGA, and AFTRA. Donna served as Governor of the TV Academy’s Writers Peer Group from 2000 to 2005, was elected Governors' representative to the Executive Committee, and was ATAS Treasurer from 2005 to 2010.
