Joan Ganz Cooney
Joan Ganz Cooney
Joan Ganz Cooneyis an American television producer. She is one of the founders of the Sesame Workshop, the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street, which was also co-created by her. Cooney grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and earned a B.A. degree in education from the University of Arizona in 1951. After working for the State Department in Washington, D.C. and as a journalist in Phoenix, she worked as a publicist for television and production...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionProducer
Date of Birth30 November 1929
CountryUnited States of America
I did not even go to kindergarten; I just started first grade when I was five and started reading right away. I don't know how it all worked, but I had a lot of adults and older siblings around me. So, I guess I was probably introduced to what one would be introduced to at that time in kindergarten.
Big Bird was the biggest star, I mean, children's favorite for a number of years. I have a 22-year-old granddaughter whose first words were 'Big Bird.'
I was a TV producer at a noncommercial station, and we were producing some good documentaries - on Head Start, on poverty. But I was struck by the children, and the damage that poverty was doing to them. I didn't think filming them was helping much, so I wondered how we could use TV for them, to teach them.
My degree was in education, but the idea of being a teacher lost out to being a reporter. I worked at a newspaper for a while, then went to New York and worked in PR at RCA and NBC, and at 'The United States Steel Hour,' a drama series.
The question for me was, could TV actually teach? I knew it could, because I knew 3-year-olds who sang beer commercials!
Probably any successful career has X number of breaks in it, and maybe the difference between successful people and those who aren't super achievers is taking advantage of those breaks.