Biography by Design
Every person and organization has a story.
Let us help you tell yours.
Meet Our Team
Kate Buford
Partner
Kate Buford is the Executive Producer of the 2026 documentary Jim Thorpe: Lit by Lightning, a joint venture from Springhill Company, LeBron James’ production company, and The History Channel. It is based on her award-winning and New York Times Editors’ Choice biography Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe (Knopf, 2010). She also wrote the New York Times Editors’ Choice best-seller Burt Lancaster: An American Life (Knopf, 2000; Aurum UK, 2002, 2008), the story of one of Hollywood’s greatest stars and the trail-blazing indie producer. A Californian come east, Kate earned an MS in information/library science at Columbia University, worked as a law librarian on Wall Street (Cravath; Davis Polk; Willkie Farr), a vp at the global corporate communications firm of FSG Global, a commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition and APM’s Marketplace, and contributor to many publications, television shows, and documentaries. She now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. (photo: Robert Curtis)
Abigail Santamaria
Partner
Abigail Santamaria is the author of Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), and is currently at work on I Am Meg: The Life of Madeleine L’Engle, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. For the latter work she was named a 2024-2025 Fellow at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Past awards include a MacDowell Fellowship (2023), a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar grant (2022), a Sustainable Arts Foundation award (2021), and a Leon Levy Center for Biography fellowship (2019). Abby's essays, book reviews, and feature stories have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and Literary Hub, among other publications. She has led numerous writing workshops, and most recently created and taught a master class in the graduate nonfiction writing program at Columbia University, where she earned a MFA in 2004.
Follow her on Instagram: @asantamariawriter
Humphrey Keenlyside
Associate
London associate Humphrey Keenlyside has been writing nonfiction for 30 years, and probably longer if you count his time before that as a journalist and as a lawyer. Most of his writing is now done for law firms and lawyers. He is the author of six law firm histories – for Allen & Overy, for Linklaters, for Watson, Farley & Williams, and for White & Case. A seventh one for a leading shipping and insurance law firm will soon be published. He has also written two family biographies. The first was the life story of his father-in-law, a diplomat whose work was dominated by the Cold War. The second was of the mother of his former boss, who told the story of her life and that of her husband, who fled Austria from the Nazis in the 1930s. He is currently working on the life story of a man who grew up in Liverpool after the second world war and came to be known for his expertise in chemicals in Europe. When not penning words, Humphrey is often to be found on the sports field or taking exercise in some form or passing on his love of music to his two sons.
Jeannette Larson
Associate
Jeannette Larson has spent many years engaged in the telling of stories and the making of books, primarily as a developmental editor. In her nearly thirty years at Harcourt Trade Publishers, later Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, she acquired and developed picture books, fiction, and illustrated nonfiction by both established and emerging talent. Many of the books she shepherded to publication have received notable literary awards and landed on national lists, including multiple appearances on the New York Times bestseller list. She now collaborates with authors, illustrators, and publishers seeking an experienced editorial hand for projects ranging from children’s books to biography. For BBD, Jeannette contributes to the writing process through strategic planning and research, project management, and editorial development.