American television producer Carolyn Strauss was BOTD in 1963. Born in Scarsdale, New York to a middle-class Jewish family, she studied history at Harvard University. In 1986, she worked in the New York office of cable television network HBO. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1990 as the network’s first female head of original programming, commissioning some of the most celebrated television series of the decade, including The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under. Praised for their novelistic plots, complex characterisations and frank depiction of sex and homosexuality, Strauss’ productions won innumerable industry awards, and are credited with elevating television as an art form and supplanting cinema in their presentation of ground-breaking subject matter. In 2008, Strauss was promoted to president of HBO’s entertainment division, leaving the job ten months later to become an independent producer. After negotiating a production deal with HBO, she went on to further success as an executive producer of the series Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Chernobyl and The Last of Us. Openly gay since forever, Strauss lives in Los Angeles, and is in a relationship with filmmaker Nisha Ganatra.