Sue Ann Staake-Wayne

SUE ANN STAAKE-WAYNE

Sue Ann Staake-Wayne’s career in production and broadcasting spans over four decades. She is currently Executive Director and Director/Producer of SAS Productions, Inc., a video production company she started in 1988. With national as well as local credits to her name, she has won four local Emmy® Awards. In 2014 she received a National Emmy® Award for Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer’s program on the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination broadcast live from Dallas.
Ms. Staake-Wayne's national directing credits include; Face the Nation and Special Events including the last six Inaugurations for CBS NEWS where she free-lanced for 25 years; and Religion & Ethics, Newsweekly for PBS, which she directed for 12 years. Other directing assignments included Washington Week with Gwen Ifill for PBS (Emmy® nominated), This Week with David Brinkley, Weekend News and Nightline for ABC NEWS; First Business for USA NETWORK and Picture What Women Do for the LIFETIME NETWORK. In 1998, she directed and co-produced the 40th EMMY Awards on WETA-TV for NATASDC. She has been a member of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) since 1984.
Her most recent SAS Production was “Ageless Health”, an hour-long program profiling people who have sought alternative options for their health care. She was the Executive Producer & Director, receiving two local Emmy® Award nominations. It aired on WETA-TV in Washington, DC November 2012.
Ms. Staake-Wayne has traveled to Bosnia twice to assist in the production of election programming. She was hired by the U.S. State Department as a Television Production Consultant working for the OSCE (The Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe) and OHR (The Office of the High Representative). In 1998 she oversaw the direction of three live Presidential Debates, serving as Production Manager for the three-city series. In 2000, she supervised the pre-production of You Choose, a three hour live election debate, hooking up studios in Sarajevo and Banka Luku. This was the first election debate to air live nationally on their newly formed television network.
In 1999, she was the Coordinating Producer for 50 hours of live coverage over four days for NATO-TV, broadcast internationally from the International Trade Center in DC. Also that year, she directed a four-hour/10 cities live studio videoconference including an interview with then First Lady Hillary Clinton. In 1997, she directed a three-hour videoconference for Gallaudet University. It was uplinked to over 200 sites and staffed almost exclusively by deaf students.
Her national producing credits include the Emmy® Award winning Matthew's Magical Christmas, which she directed and Patty Hearst on the Witness Stand for METROMEDIA, INC, also Emmy® Award nominated. She produced segments for FOX, including. America's Most Wanted - Inside the Criminal Mind Special and Not Just the News. She also produced life style features for MIN Washington, a series airing in Arab countries via the BBC. Her local producing credits include Probe, the Emmy® Award winning 22:26 and Emmy® Award nominated Capital Edition; weekly and monthly public affairs program series and magazine profiles for WUSA-TV, a CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.
Her corporate clients have included the U.S. Departments of Education and Defense, SACO SmartVision, Inc., USIA, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AARP, Chartered Health Plan, USPS, UCP, Team Video International, Gallaudet University, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She has produced and directed numerous videoconferences, telethons, award shows, and videos for these clients. For ten years, she produced and directed the National Trust for Historical Preservation’s Awards Ceremony at their annual convention.
Her career in broadcasting began in 1973 at WTTG-TV, Wash., D.C., then owned by METROMEDIA, INC. She has been on staff at ABC News, Washington, DC Bureau, WETA-TV (PBS), WUSA-TV (CBS Affiliate) also in Washington. D.C. and WTVZ (TVX Broadcast Group) in Norfolk, Virginia. She has worked free-lance for NBC, CNBC and the Voice of America, in Washington, D.C.

From 1986-1994, Ms. Staake-Wayne was an Adjunct Professor at The American University in Washington, D.C. She taught Fundamentals of Television Production and Directing Talent for Television. She also taught a semester at Montgomery Junior College in Rockville, MD.
In her over thirty years of service to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), she has held the following positions: President of the Washington D.C. Chapter, National Secretary, National Trustee and Alternate Trustee. She is a member of NATAS’ Silver Circle, inducted in 1998 for twenty-five years of service to the Washington, DC broadcasting community. She has also served on the Directors Guild of America Eastern Council and as a volunteer for Opera Americana in Arlington, VA.
Since retiring from CBS in 2015, she and her husband Gary have moved to Morrison, Colorado with their two cats and two dogs.
Ms. Staake-Wayne will continue to work on special projects through her DC/Denver based company SAS Productions, Inc.