Marion Lear Swaybill
Executive Producer
The Miracle of Feeding Cities: The Film
The Food Lab – University of Texas at Austin

As a media professional, Emmy award-winning producer Marion Lear Swaybill’s work reflects her passion for history, the arts and storytelling along with her belief in the potential of film to preserve cultural literacy, provide new and unexpected experiences, connect people with one another and enrich the public dialogue.

Professionally and personally, Swaybill has had a life-long passion for food and fascination with how food connects us to our past, to one another in the moment and shapes our stories overall.

Marion Lear Swaybill is an Emmy award-winning television producer, pioneering media executive and communications consultant. Working with broadcasters, producers, publishing companies, foundations and other not-for-profits, Swaybill makes critical industry connections, devises original and successful production, outreach, branding, marketing, distribution and funding strategies, develops an array of traditional and digital media products and provides innovative solutions for a wide range of clients.

As a production executive, Swaybill has produced hundreds of hours of award-winning programs for PBS, cable and network television, raised upwards of $50mm in production and co-production financing and developed international co-production financing models that became the industry standards. She is the winner of two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and a DW Griffith Award, among others. From the Holocaust to post-war Kosovo, Jewish humor to sports, science, anthropology and the culture of food to contemporary drama and choral music, Swaybill’s work reflects her passion for history, the arts and storytelling along with her belief in the potential of film to preserve cultural literacy, provide new and unexpected experiences, connect people with one another and enrich the public dialogue.

In addition to producing, Swaybill has been a media and marketing consultant since 1995. She has helped launch and generate top-line revenues for diverse businesses including three independent production companies, two distribution companies and two Internet start-ups. Swaybill developed and implemented profitable web strategies, branding and marketing plans and education / media outreach initiatives for clients including The Weill Music Institute / Carnegie Hall, The Dramatists Guild Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, Bill Moyers / Public Affairs Television, The Fetzer Institute, Trinity Church Wall Street, 3 Generations and Selfhelp Community Services, among others.

Swaybill is on the Board of Directors of Conspirare, Austin-based, world renown choral organization and Girl Be Heard in New York City, a not-for-profit theater company that empowers young women in challenging circumstances. She has served on the Boards of SKIP, a not-for-profit serving children at risk, and Business Links International, an international trading company in New York. She is former Chairman, Board of Advisors, National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum and was Festival Chair for the Women 2000 Film Festival at the UN Beijing + 5 Conference.

Swaybill is a painter, photographer and cook. As part of her own food story, in 1975 Swaybill’s chocolate chip cookies were named Best in New York in a citywide competition sponsored by New York Magazine. Her recipes have been published in the Random House Great Cooks Guide series [1976] and in Sound Magazine [2013]. She is the co-author of The Sexy Body Diet and Exercise Book published by Symphony Press [1982].