About
Veronica Stickelman’s production career began by using vacation time at her corporate operations management role at a major cable company to be a production assistant. After quickly being offered positions in production, that was it! Her background combination of a BA from Drexel University and an MA from Temple University and a successful business career lead her to eventually land in documentary production and directing. Her keen curiosity for cultures and history, hustle, and immaculate timing, lead to a slew of feature documentaries, limited documentary series, specials and digital short form work. Her work can be seen on Hulu, Paramount +, CNN, History Channel, PBS, and ESPN to name a few. Some highlights include CNN’s Lincoln: Divided We Stand which won an Emmy for Outstanding Narration by Sterling K Brown and Hulu’s Betrayal: A Father’s Secret which stood in the number one watched slot on Hulu upon its release. Stickelman injects, in all of her projects, a message of universal connection among people over time and across borders. She does this by not only diving deeply into her subject matter, but also by fostering an open and affirming set for her cast and crew.
While Stickelman creates various television series, feature docs, and specials, her proven proficiency is in limited series premium documentaries about history. The reason she creates documentaries is to pose questions about historical events and their relevance in modern life. How do humans go about telling and finding truths? Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History, Lincoln: Divided We Stand and Thomas Jefferson are all 6 part historical documentary series. Her role in the creation of these involves an immersive literature review to identify the key voices and consultants to create the portrait of characters in these stories. She also needed to create a trusting bond with institutions like The Vatican, The Library of Congress and Monticello to allow film crews unprecedented access. Ultimately educational, these shows also call into question society’s perception of its leaders. It asks questions about a society’s role in the creation of power. It also confronts some of the origins of the state of the world today in more of a survey of the landscape rather than in a moral judgement. These series leave the questions open to the viewer given the truth of the subject.
From her body of work, Stickelman concludes that human emotion has not evolved over historical time, but rather has just changed pace. If you show people relatable stories, whether in documentary or narrative, empathy and human compassion will always win. That’s something history has proven, and she will continue to showcase in any future film or television project.
PRODUCER
As a producer Veronica has the ability to build the structure of a production end to end. She’s what you’d consider a Director’s producer because she has this uncanny creativity that she can harness into action, allowing her to make the most obscure visual goals a reality. She thrives on taking limitations and making them space for innovation. She’s an AD’s dream because of her forward thinking - with over a decade with a variety of production experiences, she knows there are a lot of interests to keep in mind; thus, she fosters an open communication around the realities of scheduling to budget constraints.
Veronica’s directing style is driven by her ability to envision how emotions come to life and project them into reality. At a young age, she had an obsession with pouring through images in her father’s National Geographic magazine collection and sneaking late nights watching HBO. When a movie rental store opened the next block over from her house, she took flight. Having consumed endless hours of cinema, making a study out it, she created her personal film school. Now, while directing, she starts with her own storyboard sketches and embarks on the process of preparation with cinematographers and department heads as a collaborative explosion of imagination.