2026 HUMANITAS PRIZES
KIESER AWARD
Humanitas will honor Winnie Holzman with The 2026 Kieser Award at the 2026 Humanitas Prizes Award Show & Toast on September 9 at Avalon Hollywood.
The award will be presented by filmmakers Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who first hired her as a writer on thirtysomething before approaching her to work on a new project that would evolve into the seminal My So-Called Life.
The Kieser Award honors those who have dedicated their substantial talent, work, and resources to creating transformative stories that celebrate our common humanity. In addition to Holzman, past recipients have included Greg Berlanti, Marta Kauffman, John Sacret Young, John Ridley, Jason Katims, Fay Kanin, and Bill Moyers.
“Winnie has consistently explored the complexities of the human condition with compassion, intelligence, and emotional honesty. Winnie’s work has made generations grappling with coming of age and identity feel both seen and heard,” said Michelle Franke, Humanitas’s Executive Director. “We admire her steadfast commitment to mentoring and nurturing writers, as we saw up close when she twice served as a mentor in our New Voices Fellowship program. We are honored to be recognizing her with The Kieser Award this September.”
About the Honoree
Winnie Holzman is the writer of the musical Wicked, collaborating with renowned songwriter Stephen Schwartz. Wicked will celebrate 23 years on Broadway this fall. It has been performed in over one hundred and thirty cities around the world.
After graduating from Princeton University, where she was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize, Holzman wrote and performed with a comedy group off off Broadway, before being accepted into the newly formed NYU Musical Theatre Program, where she studied with such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. Her thesis musical, Birds of Paradise, was eventually produced off-Broadway, directed by Laurents.
Her breakthrough came when Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick invited her to join the writing staff of their groundbreaking TV series thirtysomething. With Zwick and Herskovitz executive producing, she went on to create the critically acclaimed series My So-Called Life, which starred a fourteen-year-old Claire Danes and for which she received an Emmy nomination and a Critics Choice Award for best Drama series.
Other TV credits include Once and Again, (created by her mentors, Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz) Huge (collaborating with her daughter, Savannah Dooley) and executive producing on Cameron Crowe’s series Roadies.
Married for nearly 42 years to character actor Paul Dooley, with whom she’s written two plays, Holzman is also an actor, and was seen in Jerry Maguire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Comeback and A Man on the Inside. Her play Choice has been produced at the Huntington Theatre in Boston and at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre.
Most recently, she co-wrote (with Dana Fox) both screenplays for the movie adaptations of Wicked.
She is a longtime supporter of The Bard Prison Initiative, the Global Aids Interfaith Alliance, and The States Project.
About the Presenters
Marshall Herskovitz is a writer, producer, and director who has won numerous awards for his work in television and film. Born in Philadelphia, he attended Brandeis University, then moved to Los Angeles in 1975, where he attended the American Film Institute. One of his classmates was Edward Zwick, and there the two created the longest creative partnership in Hollywood: The Bedford Falls Company, named for the town in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. In the ensuing decades they created such TV series as thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again; and Herskovitz variously produced and/or wrote many films with Zwick, including Legends of the Fall, Traffic, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond. Herskovitz also directed Jack the Bear and the cult-favorite Dangerous Beauty.
In 2007, Herskovitz created the groundbreaking online series and social network quarterlife, which at the time was the internet’s most successful scripted series, and the first online series to transition to network television.
A longtime environmentalist, Herskovitz has served on the board of several organizations dedicated to fighting climate change. He is a past president of the Producers Guild of America.
Born in Winnetka, Illinois, Edward Zwick began directing and acting in high school and trained as an apprentice at the Academy Festival in Lake Forest. While studying literature at Harvard, he continued writing and directing for the theatre. Upon graduation, he was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to study in Europe with some of the major innovative theatre companies.
Zwick was accepted as a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute in 1975. Timothy and the Angel, Zwick’s AFI short film, won first place in the student film competition at the 1976 Chicago Film Festival and caught the attention of the producers of the television series Family. He served as story editor on Family and subsequently became a director and producer.
For his work on the television movie Special Bulletin (as director, producer and co-writer), Zwick received two Emmy Awards. It also marked the beginning of his collaboration with Marshall Herskovitz, with whom he then created the Emmy Award winning television series, thirtysomething. Together Herskovitz and Zwick created The Bedford Falls Company as their home for film and television projects, including the critically acclaimed television series My So-Called Life, Relativity, and the Emmy Award and Golden Globe award winning series Once and Again.
Zwick began his feature film career directing About Last Night. He went on to direct the Academy Award winning films Glory and Legends of the Fall. Zwick also directed the films Courage Under Fire, The Siege, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, Defiance, Love & Other Drugs, Pawn Sacrifice, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, and Trial By Fire. Zwick and Herskovitz also produced the films I Am Sam, as well as Traffic–winner of two Golden Globes and four Academy Awards–directed by Steven Soderbergh and the Academy Award nominated film I Am Sam. Zwick most recently produced and directed Asymmetry starring Richard Gere and Diana Silvers.
Zwick has been honored with three Emmy Awards, the Humanitas Prize, the Writer’s Guild of America Award, two Peabody Awards, a Director’s Guild of America Award, and the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Award from the American Film Institute. He received an Academy Award as a producer of 1999’s Best Picture Shakespeare in Love.
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