Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin

TED Fellow Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin is a professor-turned-television executive who transforms dusty archival material into compelling historical narratives for theater and TV, bridging academia and entertainment.

Born to Ghanaian immigrants in Tuskegee, Alabama and raised in Kansas, “Dr. Amma” is a multidisciplinary scholartist, writer, performer, and producer who bridges the worlds of academia and arts and entertainment, having worked for A&E® Networks/The History Channel, National History Day, Inc., and as a professor. Dr. Amma also previously served as Vice President of Creative Affairs at JusticeRx, a production company that had a two-year creative partnership and exclusive overall deal at Warner Bros. Television Group developing original TV programming, and consulting with studio executives and show creators on equity, inclusion, and social justice.

She is best known as the lead creative force and executive behind the national team of "AT BUFFALO: A NEW MUSICAL." Co-written with Joshua Williams and Khalil Sullivan and developed with creative producer Deadria Harrington, producer Blair Russell, and co-conceiver Jim Augustine, "AT BUFFALO" is an “archivally-true, historically-plausible” musical in development about America, race, and the 1901 Buffalo, New York World’s Fair. Dr. Amma's TED Talk on "AT BUFFALO" has been viewed over 2 million times.

Dr. Amma's hyper-collaborative creative research projects have garnered numerous fellowships and awards including a MAP Fund Grant, an Innovative Seed Grant (CU-Boulder), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Fellowship, etc. She is also a co-recipient of a 2020 Honorable Mention for the National Council on Public History’s Outstanding Public History Project Award for her co-direction of [the Georgia Incarceration Performance Project]. Her educational work for the History Channel's Peabody award-winning documentary "Save Our History: Voices of Civil Rights" received a 2006 Beacon Award. The History Channel also selected Dr. Amma to join the ranks of Ang Lee and Gloria Estefan as one of 37 extraordinary immigrants/children of immigrants whose stories are currently featured at Ellis Island’s Museum of Immigration.

Dr. Amma holds an AB in Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and an MA/PhD in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.