Axios
Nancy Abraham is Executive Vice President, Documentary Programming, for Home Box Office. She is responsible for the development and production of HBO Documentary Films which have garnered prestigious industry awards including Primetime Emmy® Awards, News and Documentary Emmy® Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, Alfred I. DuPont Awards and Academy Awards®. She was named to this position in 2018.
Prior to joining HBO’s documentary division in 1995, and promoted to vice president, HBO Documentary Programming, in 1998, Abraham was director, Film Acquisition, acquiring feature films and other programs for HBO’s international channels. She also spent three years in Budapest as director, Programming, for HBO Hungary.
Abraham previously worked at Bravo Cable Network in both acquisition and production capacities.
She has served as a moderator and participant in numerous industry panels/events including the Sundance Film Festival, the International Emmys®, the Real Screen Summit, AFI/Silverdocs, IFP Independent Film Week, the Full Frame Documentary Festival and others in the U.S. and abroad, and as a Forum delegate at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), the Hot Docs Producers Forum in Toronto and BritDoc. She has also served as a member of the Non-Fiction Peer Group Executive Committee of The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS), the selection committee for the duPont Awards and the IFP’s Gotham Awards Committee, as well as a juror for the News and Documentary Emmys®, the Hampton’s International Film Festival, the Woodstock International Film Festival and MountainFilm Teluride.
Abraham is a board member of SPW-USA, a youth-led international development organization, and was a founding board member of Doc Fest, a documentary film festival in New York City. She is a member of New York Women in Film & Television, NATAS, ATAS, and was featured in The Hollywood Reporter’s “35 Under 35 to Watch” article in 1998.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Vassar College where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and attended Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
What is Axios on HBO?This news-oriented, short documentary series offers a new, exciting lens into the topics reshaping the world in real time. Axios is wired into the biggest names in business, tech, media, politics and science. We show how those worlds are all colliding to create new businesses, new cultures, new conflicts — and bring viewers eye-opening interviews, gripping mini-docs and juicy scoops.
Why it matters:This is a first-of-its-kind show, fusing Axios reporting on the collision of the biggest topics with the storytelling brilliance of HBO and two award-winning documentary filmmakers. The ambition: to leave viewers feeling smarter and like they saw something refreshingly new and different.
The show’s format: Eight 24-minute episodes – four in the spring and four in the fall - featuring:
● Provocative interviews with the leading minds and voices in America and around the world, with a behind the curtain look into the Axios reporters thinking before and after.
● Quick, newsy, insightful segments designed to tell you something new or to think bigger about events unfolding around you.
● Mini-docs exploring the collision of tech, politics, business and media, featuring fresh, on-the-ground reporting amplifying the insights of Axios experts.
New this year: In addition, for the first time ever, there will be four, short specials (10 to 15 minutes in length), that will air in primetime and feature breaking news.
Bios of those accepting:
Jim VandeHei, Co-Founder & CEO
Jim VandeHei is a co-founder and CEO of Axios. Jim launched Axios in January 2017 with Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz. Jim is a co-founder and former CEO of POLITICO, the digital media company that upended and revolutionized political and policy journalism in Washington, New York, and Europe. Jim was the leading strategic mind behind its high-growth, high-impact and highly-scalable business model. Jim was named one of the 100 leading information age thinkers in America by Vanity Fair and was awarded the 2015 Editor of the Year award by the National Press Foundation. Jim covered the presidency and politics for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post before starting media companies.
Roy Schwartz, Co-Founder & CEO
Roy Schwartz is a co-founder and president of Axios. Roy is the former chief revenue officer for POLITICO, the digital media company that upended and forever changed political and policy journalism in Washington, New York, and Europe. Roy was featured in the 2015 FOLIO 100 as a “Corporate Catalyst” and by the Washington Business Journal in its 2015 “40 under 40.” An expert in digital media, business, and strategy, Roy is a frequent speaker at media conferences including SXSW, Digital East, Interactive Media Conference, to name a few. Roy was a Partner at Gallup’s management consulting practice in Washington, D.C. and California advising Fortune 500 companies on employee and customer engagement.
Mike Allen, Co-Founder & Executive Editor
Mike Allen is a co-founder and executive editor of Axios. Mike was a co-founder of POLITICO where he started Playbook, the agenda-driving newsletter that led The New York Times Magazine to dub him “The Man The White House Wakes Up To.” Mike was named to Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment,” and is an alumnus of TIME, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star. He grew up in Orange County, Calif., and graduated from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.
Evan Ryan, Executive Vice President
Evan Ryan is the executive vice president of Axios. She previously served under Secretary Kerry as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. She served in two White House administrations, most recently as assistant to the Vice President and special assistant to the President for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement (2009-2013), and prior to that- deputy director of scheduling for First Lady Hillary Clinton and special assistant to the First Lady’s chief of staff (1994-2004). Ryan also has campaign experience: deputy campaign director for then Senator Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign; deputy director of communications for the John Kerry for President campaign; and director of scheduling for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senatorial campaign. She is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Matthew O’Neill is an Emmy® Award winning and Academy Award® nominated director who’s been working with DCTV making documentaries for the last fifteen years. His work directing the 2006 HBO documentary,Baghdad ER, was recognized with a Columbia DuPont Award, a Peabody Award, an Overseas Press Club Award and three Primetime Emmy Awards for Nonfiction Programs (Best Directing, Best Cinematography and Exceptional Merit in Non-Fiction Programming). His 2017 HBO documentary series 15: A Quinceañera Story he directed was nominated for a DGA Award for Achievement in Children’s Programming and an Imagen award, and his other HBO documentaries include the Academy Award® nominated Redemption (2013), the Emmy® nominated Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq (2007), the Emmy® nominated Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (2008), the Academy Award® nominatedChina’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (2009), the Academy Award short-listed In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution (2012) and Wartorn: 1861-2010 (2010) - winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize. His other documentaries have aired on the PBS series FRONTLINE, ESPN, Channel 4, NHK and broadcasters worldwide.