Boston public media producer GBH has awarded fellowships to three outstanding producers, recognizing excellence, potential and creativity. The recipients of the 2023 Fellowship Awards are Elizabeth (Biz) Thorsen, who received the Becton Fellowship, Yatibaey Evans who received the Margret and Hans Rey Fellowship, and Caitlin Saks who received the Peter S. McGhee Fellowship.
"From ensuring that our children's programming remains an educational and innovative facet of our institution to creating world-renowned science and technology media that demystifies the concepts that define our lives, these three producers have gone above and beyond to expand the possibilities of public media," said GBH President and CEO Jon Abbott. "I'm proud that GBH continues to celebrate the ingenuity of its talent and to acknowledge the quality content produced across various platforms."
Caitlin Saks of Boston's South End was selected as the Peter S. McGhee Fellow. Named for GBH's former head of national programming, the McGhee Fellowship is awarded each year to a mid-career filmmaker who has shown exceptional promise in non-fiction television production and who adheres to the standards set by McGhee, including excellence, intelligence, fairness, passion and scholarship.
Saks is a producer for the science documentary series NOVA where she works on both long-form broadcast films and short-form digital-first content. Much of her work has focused on climate and environmental topics. She was NOVA's senior producer on Arctic Drift and Can We Cool the Planet? She also produced and co-hosted NOVA's digital series Antarctic Extremes, hosted its online companion game, The Polar Lab, co-produced NOVA's Emmy-nominated television special on climate change, Decoding the Weather Machine, and co-produced the virtual reality experience Greenland Melting. She also produces content on a variety of other science topics, including the five-part series NOVA Universe Revealed, the short documentary Gene-Editing Reality Check, and the duPont-Columbia Award-winning Decoding COVID-19. Before joining NOVA, Saks worked on films for FRONTLINE, including League of Denial, The Choice 2012, and Money, Power, and Wall Street. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Earth Science and Media from Harvard University.
Biz Thorsen of Cumberland, Rhode Island was selected as the Becton Fellow. Yatibaey Evans, Creative Producer for GBH's award-winning series, Molly of Denali, was selected as the Margret and Hans Rey Fellow.