Joan Greco brings an attorney's understanding of nuance - garnered from work at the United States Supreme Court - and a playwright's sense of drama to the hypothetical scenarios that are the backbone of a Socratic Dialogue. There at the inception of the format, Greco was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and a research assistant to Professor Arthur Miller when he asked her if she'd like to work on a series of television shows on the Constitution. The daughter of a postal worker, surviving on scholarships and student loans, she was eager for the work. The programs turned out to be the 13-part seminal Fred Friendly series, THE CONSTITUTION: That Delicate Balance. Greco worked on the first program in the series, The Sovereign Self, which won an Emmy. She was hooked.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Greco clerked for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals and for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the United States Supreme Court, which she describes as "the two best jobs in the law one could imagine." After a few years at a law firm, however, Greco found that the impact she could have on the American conversation through Socratic Dialogues was a potent lure. She brought her subtle intellect back to the Fred Friendly Seminars where she was a mainstay of the production team, contributing as the writer or writer/producer to over 35 of the PBS programs, as well as to many dozens of dialogue programs for clients. Now she brings over twenty years of experience in the Socratic Dialogue format to Dialogue Media Group.
"A Socratic Dialogue is a fantastic combination of journalism, drama and logic," says Greco. "To shape hypothetical scenarios that work, one must understand the truth of a situation at the minute-to-minute, concrete level. To make decisions in the story compelling, we have to find that point where a choice turns on one's values, the point where you cannot use other factors to wriggle out of the situation, and must take a stand. When it works, it's riveting and revealing like nothing else."