2025 Women’s Leadership Award Winner

Dawn Porter is an award-winning documentary filmmaker known for her storytelling on social justice, history, and cultural icons. Her celebrated documentaries have aired on HBO, Netflix, CNN, and PBS.  Many of her films elevate marginalized voices and illuminate U.S. history’s lesser-known stories.

Dawn discovered her passion for filmmaking from an unlikely background. After graduating from Swarthmore with a degree in political science, she earned a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She was a practicing attorney and at one point began litigating for ABC-TV in New York. It was at ABC News that she gained first-hand exposure to filmmaking, seeing how news stories were put together. She also credits her extensive experience taking depositions with honing her interviewing and listening skills. 

Through her production company, Trilogy Films, she has brought us the lessons history holds for us today and in the future, with Trapped, John Lewis: Good Trouble, and the Lady Bird Diaries.  Her most recent work Luther: Never Too Much was shown at the Virginia Film Festival last Fall before it aired on CNN and on OWN; Oprah Winfrey Network.

Dawn’s achievements are widely recognized. She received the Critics’ Choice Impact Award in 2022 and Gracie Awards in both 2022 and 2023. Recently, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, awarded the National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony and received the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association.

Dawn serves on the Board of Managers at Swarthmore College. She is the mother of two sons, Eli and Will, and resides with her family in New York City.

“Can a film reveal the untold stories of the human condition? Absolutely.”

https://www.trilogy-films.com