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Motown
Records.
"Lady Sings the Blues."
"Showtime at the Apollo."
"Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century."
Suzanne
de Passe is the powerhouse woman behind all of these
ventures.
The
Chairman and CEO of de Passe Entertainment, Suzanne
started her own production company in 1992 after
a successful career at Motown Records.
She
began her career at Motown as creative assistant
to Berry Gordon, and subsequently rose to the position
of president of Motown Productions. She was a partner
in Gordy/de Passe Productions prior to establishing
de Passe Productions.
The
recipient of an Academy Award nomination for co-writing
the screenplay, "Lady Sings the Blues," de Passe
garnered two Emmy Awards and NAACP Image Awards
as executive producer of "Motown 25: Yesterday,
Today, Forever" and "Motown Returns to the Apollo."
She
also served as executive producer for the highly
acclaimed and award- winning mini-series "Lonesome
Doves," "Small Sacrifices," "The Jacksons: An American
Dream," "Buffalo Girls," and the four-hour NBC mini-series,
"The Temptations," which won an NAACP Image Award
for Best Mini-Series (it was also nominated for
a Golden Globe Award and six Emmy Awards, including
Best Mini-Series).
The
subject of two Harvard Business School case studies,
"Suzanne de Passe and Motown Productions, and "de
Passe Entertainment," Suzanne was named the new
AOL Time Warner Visiting Professor in the Department
of Radio, Television and Film of the Howard University
School of Communications beginning in the fall of
2002.
Inducted
into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1990,
de Passe was honored as Revlon's Business Woman
of the Year in 1994, and received the American Women
in Radio and Television's prestigious Silver Satellite
Award in 1999.
More
recently, she has moved in front of the camera as
a judge and coach on the newly created reality show,
"All American Girl" on ABC.
(This
article is reprinted from the Fall 2003 edition
of Enterprising Women magazine. Copyright
2003, Enterprising Women Inc. Reproduction in whole
or part is prohibited, except by permission of the
publisher.)
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