2025

Jerald B. Harkness, BA’91 (sociology), Cert’91, is the president and CEO of Studio Auteur, a content creation company specializing in broadcast documentaries. A national Emmy-award winner, Harkness’ prolific career spans over 30 years, during which he has produced and directed for Paramount TV, UMC, ESPN, VH1, A&E, PBS, CBS Sports Network, and Tubi.

Recent work includes producing and directing the feature-length documentary “When Everyone Swims” (2025), which won Best Documentary Feature from the Chicago Indie Film Awards and Best Editing from the New York Independent Cinema Awards.

In 2023, Harkness produced and directed the biographical documentary “The Bright Path: The Johnny Bright Story,” which aired nationally on CBS Sports Network and PBS, and was selected for multiple film festivals. Harkness was the executive producer and showrunner of the docu-drama series "True First," which celebrates forgotten and overlooked African American trailblazers and pioneers.

Harkness’ first project under his company Studio Auteur was a documentary short titled “Wesley” for the award-winning series “The Election Effect” created for Paramount TV and distributed by Facebook in 2017.

Harkness has produced and directed a number of independent and broadcast documentaries, including the Al Unser story for ESPN's award-winning “Sports Century” series in 2002. His first documentary, “Steppin,’” produced in 1992, won the National Educational Gold Apple Award and the 1994 Pan African People’s Choice Award.

His second documentary, “Facing the Façade,” debuted in 1994 and won the Indiana Film Festival’s Best Documentary and the People’s Choice Award. Harkness produced and directed “The Game of Change,” which was selected for the 2008 Heartland Film Festival and was acknowledged by President Barack Obama.

Other broadcast documentary projects that aired in Indiana are “Living as a Legend: The Damon Bailey Story,” “The Men of Montford Point: The First Black Marines,” “Eyewitness to a Century: The Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper,” “The Heart of the Campus: The Indiana Memorial Union,” and “Glories of Our Journeys,” which tells the story of one of Indianapolis’ first Black public schools.

Notable awards include a national Emmy, Best Documentary for the International Academy of Web TV, the inaugural Spotlight Award from the Indianapolis Black Documentary Filmmaker Festival, and numerous festival awards, including selections in the Heartland Film Festival, Pan African Film Festival, and Indy Film Festival.

In 2023, Harkness donated raw footage and master tapes from many of his projects to the Black Film Center & Archive at Indiana University. The Jerald Harkness Collection will be available to students, scholars, and the IU community in perpetuity.