Natasha Lance Rogoff is an award-winning television producer, writer and director of documentaries, children’s television shows and digital educational content for over twenty-five years.
She executive produced Ulitsa Sezam (Sesame Street in Russia) and served as producer of Plaza Sesamo (Sesame Street in Mexico) between 1992-1997. In the early 1980s, Natasha studied Russian at Leningrad State University where she became fluent in the language allowing her to make close Russian friends and write about Soviet underground culture
for mainstream international newspapers and magazines.
Her 1983 article, “Gay Life in the Soviet Union,” published in the San Francisco Chronicle, was one of the earliest exposé of Soviet government persecution of the Russian LGBTQ community.
Her 1985 film, Rock Around the Kremlin, about Russian rock musicians who endured extreme hardships due to communist censorship, aired on ABC TV’s “20/20.” Many of these same music artists later composed original music for Ulitsa Sezam’s production.
In1993 PBS documentary, "Russia for Sale: The Rough Road to Capitalism,” Lance Rogoff embedded herself with hardline communist fascists who launched the failed coup of 1991, ending the Soviet Union.

Lance Rogoff is now an Associate in the Art, Film, and Visual Studies Department at Harvard University and lives between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.


This event will be an open-to-the-public conversation with Natasha Lance Rogoff about the topic of her most recent publication "Muppets In Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia with Natasha Lance Rogoff" moderated by Dr. Thomas Garza, University Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor and Director.