2025 TRAILBLAZER AWARD HONOREE 
KATIE NELSON THOMSON

With a legacy that spans decades of high-stakes journalism, history-making interviews and culture-defining television, Katie Nelson Thomson exemplifies what it means to blaze a trail through your industry. Her voice, influence and unshakable presence behind the scenes have elevated some of the most important conversations of our time. SRQ Magazine's Women Who Roar is thrilled to honor her this year for a career defined by courage, candor and the kind of brilliance that leaves an impact.

Katie Nelson Thomson is the powerhouse senior talent producer behind HBO‘s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, where she has been since launching the show in 2014. The half-hour topical comedy series, featuring a satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events, has received 28 Emmys and three Peabody Awards.

Before joining Last Week Tonight, Thomson was the senior broadcast producer of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight. Prior to that, she spent 15 years at ABC News working alongside legendary journalist Barbara Walters. During her time at ABC, she produced award-winning segments and interviews for 20/20 and The Barbara Walters Specials, including Walters’ exclusive interview with Monica Lewinsky—seen by over 70 million viewers and still the highest-rated news event broadcast by a single network.

While at 20/20, Thomson was instrumental in producing Barbara Walters’ Peabody-Award winning interviews with Christopher Reeve after the accident that left him paralyzed,intimate presidential candidate profiles, coverage of Princess Diana’s funeral, and Patrick Swayze’s last interview. She also played a key role in ABC’s Emmy Award-winning coverage of the September 11th terrorist attacks, securing first interviews with President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the aftermath of the tragedy. Thomson’s portfolio includes exclusive interviews with Martha Stewart before and after her conviction, Queen Noor of Jordan after King Hussein's death, Oprah Winfrey at the conclusion of her daytime series, the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, Robert Blake, and the first interviews with key figures related to the O.J. Simpson trial— featuring the defense attorneys Robert Shapiro and Robert Kardashian, prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, the family of Ron Goldman and Kato Kaelin. And it doesn’t end there, her celebrity interviews have spanned icons like Angelina Jolie, Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Julie Andrews, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Earlier in her career, Thomson was a producer on CNN’s Larry King Live in Washington, D.C., where she booked and produced newsmaker interviews with political, business, and entertainment luminaries including Barbra Streisand, David Letterman, Steven Spielberg, Colin Powell, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon, Jimmy Buffett, and Billy Joel. She also produced the historic Al Gore / Ross Perot NAFTA Debate, which set a cable news ratings record.

Thomson has produced interviews with every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter and conducted conversations with world leaders such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Benjamin Netanyahu, King Abdullah and Queen Rania, Slobodan Milosevic, Benazir Bhutto, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Oscar Arias, the Dalai Lama, and an unprecedented joint interview with Yitzhak Shamir, Yasser Arafat, and King Hussein.