Center for Communication Presents Looking Back: Historical Storytelling

For 25 years, Salimah El-Amin has worked on numerous award-winning films and television programs. Most recently, she served as a producer for The American Revolution, a six-part documentary series that examines America's war for independence and the founding of a nation. Other notable projects she has contributed to include Hemingway, College Behind Bars, The Vietnam War, Fahrenheit 9/11, Taxi to the Dark Side, The Blues, and The Trials of Henry Kissinger. She has received several awards for her work, including two Emmy Awards in research.

Salimah holds both bachelor's and master's degrees in Anthropology and Media Studies from Rutgers University, Columbia University, and The New School

Syreeta Gates didn’t find the archive—she became the archive.

Raised in South Jamaica, Queens, with a camera in one hand and a Source magazine in the other, she’s been preserving the stories we live since before she knew it could be a career. She doesn't follow blueprints — she builds them.

She earned a degree in Urban Youth Culture from Hunter College (because she invented the major) and went on to NYU for her Master’s in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation. Then? She wrote her own ticket. Gates is the founder of The Gates Preserve, a company devoted to protecting the creative record and making sure the worlds we shape outlast us.

Her work lives across mediums. She’s led archival research and produced award-winning docs including Netflix’s Ladies First, Peacock's Black Pop, The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion, and A Ballerina’s Tale. Currently, she’s producing her first feature, Shaping the Culture—a definitive excavation of hip-hop journalism from Xerox to Twitter.

Syreeta was the first Black woman on LEGO® Masters (U.S. Season 2). Where she didn’t just build with bricks, she builtMost Incredible Studio. This creative house crafts cultural compositions and collectible artifacts, transforming memories into experiences and intellectual property (IP) into tangible form.

She also foundedYo Stay Hungry—a live culinary competition where rap meets recipes and food becomes freestyle. Because when the format doesn’t exist, she invents it.

Gates has been featured in and has been recognized by The New York Times, Vogue, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Refinery29, Red Bull, and more. Her work lives on the page in books such as Fresh Fly Fabulous, BLK MKT Vintage, Stand Up!, The Quarter-Life Breakthrough and Creating Innovators.

Whether it’s a kit, a keynote, a documentary, or a dinner, Syreeta is a visionary, archival thinker, and cultural conductor. Her north star is always the same: How do we make memory visible? How do we create what’s missing? And how do we build a future worth remembering?

Dossie McCraw has three decades experience in the entertainment industry beginning as a musician and later moving to the business side of “showbiz” holding leadership positions at HBO and Spotify. Every stage of his career across live theatre, music, TV and podcasts has been fueled by a passionate belief in the power of art to do more than merely entertain, but also to enrich our lives and bring us closer together.

Currently he is an independent producer of popular podcasts including: History That Doesn’t Suck with Professor Greg Jackson which tops the Apple and Spotify history podcast charts, tours nationally as a live stage show and will debut the “The Unlikely Union: A Storytelling Symphony of America” nationally on public television this summer in celebration of America 250; Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News & Information Podcast; Ye Gods! with Scott Carter distributed by the NPR podcast network and broadcast on public radio stations across the country.