Ethan Lewis has been promoted to the head of non-fiction and sport at Higher Ground Productions, the media company of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. In the higher site, Lewis has supervised the expansion of the company to sports -related content, including “Court of Gold”, “Start 5”, which is now in production in season two, and “The Turnaround”.
He will work on both non-fiction films and television. Lewis will continue to report to Vinnie Malhotra, the president of Higher Ground Productions.
“Ethan has propelled the expansion of higher land to sports stories, while building on the award -winning track record of the company in documentary. We could no longer be more enthusiastic about the success of ‘Start 5’ and the incredible reaction to the launch of ‘Court of Gold’,” Malhotra said. “Ethan has contributed to solidifying the place of Higher Ground in non-fiction and sports worlds. We are very happy that he continues to form these spaces while playing an even greater role.”
During his time in the higher field, Lewis produced various projects of the company, including ‘Start 5’, a Netflix basket bales that offers access to five of the best players in the competition behind the scenes; ‘The Latter Daters’, an unwritten dating series about the elderly who find company, who reached number five on the most viewed list of Netflix; “Working: what we do all day”, the Emmy Award-winning limited series inspired by the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Studs Terkel; ‘Our Oceans’, a Netflix series that explores the miracle of the oceans of the earth, told by Barack Obama; And “The Light We Carry: Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey”, in which Michelle Obama delves into the challenges and life lessons that formed her second best book in conversation with Oprah Winfrey.
Lewis has supervised various documentary films by Higher Ground, including ‘The Turnaround’, the documentary short film by Academy Award-winning director Ben Proudfoot who tells the story of Philadelphia Phillies’ Superfan Jon McCann; ‘Descendant’, who follows descendants of the survivors from the Clotilda, the last ship that brought a slave to the United States, while they recover their story; and “American Symphony”, the much -praised documentary that the 2025 Grammy Award won for Best Music Film and was nominated for both an Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Bafta Award for Best Documentary
“In formats and subjects, the remarkably talented team of Higher Ground is devoted to great stories,” said Lewis. “I am honored to step into this new role and to build on the incredible non-fiction of the company and to continue to build our sports momentum.”
In 2022, Lewis joined the higher site such as SVP, non-fiction, from Michael Strahan and Constance Schwartz-Morini’s Smac Entertainment, where he served as head of unwritten and brand content. At Smac, Lewis produced and sold multi -praised shows, including HBO’s docuseries’ The Cost of Winning ‘, ESPN’s ’30 for 30: Deion’s Double Play’, ‘Wiz Khalifa: Behind the Cam’ for Apple Music and ‘BS High’. He started his career at WME, the development of content and brand possibilities between talent and the advertising arm of the agency, Droga5. He then moved to Adaptive Studios, where he contributed to the reality competition series “The Runner” and “Project Greenlight Digital Studios” from Verizon Go90, the digital content extension of HBO’s “Project Greenlight”. Before he came to Smac Entertainment in 2018, Lewis worked at the Story Lab, a worldwide non-controlled financing and distribution company.
In addition to the second season of “Start 5”, Lewis will produce the upcoming “Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds”, a new documentary that comes behind the scenes this spring with the US Airforce Thunderbirds Squadron.