As Executive Director of Scripted Content at CBC, Trish Williams has creative oversight of the public
broadcaster’s distinctive slate of original dramas, comedies, and feature films, which include such
acclaimed international hits as the Emmy-award winning comedy Schitt’s Creek, recent CSA Audience
Choice winner Son of a Critch and the longtime audience favorites Murdoch Mysteries and Heartland.
Working with the best Canadian talent, both established and emerging, Williams strives to create
entertaining and culturally relevant programming. Recently, she was pivotal in developing and
overseeing three seasons of the Peabody award-winning comedy Sort Of, which landed on best-of lists
from The New York Times to Vanity Fair. She also developed the buzzy hybrid film/TV series BlackBerry
by Matt Johnson, which premiered as a feature film at Berlinale 2023 to rave reviews before sweeping
the CSA awards in 2024. This past season, Williams developed and launched the delightful, odd-couple
detective series Wild Cards, and the morally complex police drama Allegiance, set among a powerful Sikh
family in Surrey, BC. She is thrilled to have developed the first-of-its-kind, Arctic-set comedy series North
of North, set to launch on CBC/GEM in early 2025, about a young Inuit mother who wants to build a new
future for herself in a community that won’t let her forget her past.
Before joining CBC in 2019, Williams held key senior creative roles in independent production and
broadcasting for over 15 years. She served as Vice President, Scripted Programming, at Boat Rocker
(formerly Temple Street), as well as a tenure as Director of Drama at Bell Media where she led a team
handling the development and production of original drama series and movies across the family of
channels CTV, Space, Bravo, TMN/HBO Canada, and MUCH. While at Bell Media, she was pivotal in
greenlighting and overseeing the Emmy-award winning international hit Orphan Black, as well as
overseeing many other internationally successful series across a broad range of genres and styles,
including multi-season audience-pleasers Saving Hope, Flashpoint and Degrassi: The Next Generation.
Williams has a Master of Arts in Communication and Culture from the Joint Program at York/TMU
Universities. She volunteers as a conflict mediator and has completed Transformative Mediation through
Community Justice Initiatives at the University of Waterloo.