Lynne Squilla is an independent writer, producer and director, bringing stories to life on a variety of topics for television audiences, web content, live stage productions, individual clients and for high impact public events. Her long and short form documentaries have appeared on PBS, NOVA, the cable networks Discovery, The Learning Channel, A&E, Lifetime Television, CNN, The Sci-Fi Channel, National Geographic Channel and on Britain’s Channel 4.
This producer’s awards include regional Emmy wins and nominations, association with a National Emmy win, two Birmingham Film Awards, two Action for Children’s Television Awards, three Gabriels, two Tellys, a CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) Silver, and other specialty awards. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America, East.
Among her proudest achievements is a documentary on the Russian Air Force for PBS NOVA (Top Gun Over Moscow) which pulled ten thousand web hits the night the program premiered and has since become a permanent feature on the NOVA website. See www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/topgun
Squilla has produced stage-and-music dramas with the Pittsburgh Symphony (Concert of the Future series and A Tribute to Senator John Heinz). For the 250th Anniversary of Pittsburgh’s naming, she created a dramatic show featuring 40 readers and a live band in The Point of Pittsburgh, a gallop through the city’s dramatic history from the Ice Age to its heyday in the 1960s. She has scripted numerous roasts and public ceremonies, including the annual induction awards and video profiles for the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Squilla holds a B.Phil in Foreign Correspondence (Journalism, Foreign Language and History) from The Pennsylvania State University, under the tutelage of Russian historian/author Sergei Vasilich Utechin. Her dissertation focused on historiographic method as applied to journalism, examining the work of three writers covering revolutionary Russia. She studied abroad in the former Soviet Union, is conversational in Russian and moderately adept at German. She also studied graphic design at the pre-college level at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
She served as Vice President, then President of the Mount Washington Community Development Corporation, a non-profit she helped grow into a $1M organization, establishing and editing its monthly newspaper, Viewpoint, with a circulation of nearly 7,000 households. Her successful fundraising events included An Evening on Grandview, History Unveiled: 1770 and the National Trust Tour of Mount Washington/Duquesne Heights. She was a leader in lobbying for and authoring legislation to preserve 240-acres of wooded hillside as the Mount’s Emerald View Park.
Collaborating with the City of Pittsburgh and sculptor James A. West, along with historians and members of the Seneca Nation from the New York state area, Squilla was instrumental in the creation of an innovative statue commemorating an historic meeting between George Washington and Seneca leader Guyasuta in 1770. Called Points of View, the statue sits atop a commanding view of the Three Rivers of Pittsburgh and has become a popular visitor destination and signature beauty shot.
