Scotti Williston has worked both in front of the lens as a reporter for WPIX-TV, NYC, and behind the camera as a producer around the world. She began her international career as Cairo bureau chief for CBS News and was the first journalist to report the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
After her tenure in Egypt, she became Rome bureau chief before returning to the U.S. as a producer for CBS Sunday Morning. Since leaving CBS in the mid-80s, she has been an independent producer and consultant for NBC News, WNET/PBS (NYC), POP TV (Slovenia), and Shanghai Media Group-Dragon TV (China), among others.
She has taught journalism at Marymount Manhattan College, New York University, and The New School University, and has been a visiting assistant professor of broadcast at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Williston was a 2006 Knight International Journalism Fellow in the Middle East, where she worked with journalists in Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. She has also run workshop for journalists in Haiti and Pakistan. From 2000 to 2008, she was associate director of broadcast for “Let’s Do it Better!” a Ford Foundation-funded Columbia Workshop on Journalism, Race, and Ethnicity.
She is also a founding board member of Cineminga.org, a New York City-based organization that uses audio-visual communication to help indigenous and marginalized communities internationally. Most recently, she trained the staff and helped launch a 24-hour/7-day nationwide all-news English-language cable TV channel in Pakistan.
