Sharon Liese is a critically acclaimed and award-winning filmmaker who produces documentary-style television programming and documentary films that air on major television networks. Her philosophy is a simple one: to capture real and untold stories that inspire and entertain viewers.
Liese’s percipient approach to storytelling brings audiences on a whirlwind ride of emotions and reveals to viewers the human elements of every story.
During the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Sharon Liese premiered her film Selfie in collaboration with Academy Award winning Director Cynthia Wade and in partnership with Dove and the Sundance Institute. The short film won a 2014 CLIO Image Award for excellence in a Mass Video or Film Campaign. The film’s moving and intimate examination of beauty, through the relationships of mothers and daughters in a small Massachusetts town, has already had a huge viral impact through social media; gaining more than 6 million views and still rising.
Because of her work on Selfie, Liese was asked by “The Today Show” and The Sundance Institute to serve as a Sundance Institute Mentor to young teens making a PSA for the “Love Your Selfie” segment that premiered in April 2014.
Liese created and executive produced the unprecedented and award-winning WEtv documentary series, “High School Confidential” that followed a group of teenage girls through out their entire four-year high school experience. “High School Confidential’s” first season was filmed in suburban Kansas while the next four-year cycle was filmed in urban Chicago for the show’s second season. The premiere of “High School Confidential” broke nearly every ratings record for WEtv.
Liese has also created and directed three separate pilots for MTV News and Docs. Most recently, Liese directed the pilot for “True Life: I’m Breaking Up With My Religion” which aired on MTV December 16th, 2014. Liese’s other projects include “Sobriety High,” an intimately gritty look at at-risk teenagers at a high school for recovering addicts in Minneapolis, and “Ice Queens” -an unusual glimpse into a competitive girls’ High School Ice Hockey team in Vermont.
In just the past 10 years, Sharon Liese has produced content for Fox, Discovery ID, Lifetime, The Oprah Winfrey Network, MTV, and PBS to name a few. Her credits includes “Utopia,” “Hookers: Saved on the Strip,” “The Week the Women Went,” and “Blackboard Wars.”
Liese directed the three-part Women’s Reproductive Health special, Birthing Pains for KCPT-PBS and was also the EP/show runner for the pilot of “Breaking Point”- Discovery’s newest documentary series about dangerous family secrets. The series premiered in January 2015.