An Evening With Mo Rocca

Lisa Petrillo is the Entertainment and Lifestyle Reporter for WFOR, CBS4. Throughout her years as South Florida’s premiere Entertainment Reporter, Lisa has interviewed many celebrities, among them Paul McCartney, Sting, Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John, Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty and the late Audrey Hepburn. In addition to reporting on entertainment , Lisa hosts the CBS4 “Taste of the Town “ segment celebrating South Florida’s growing culinary scene and reports on fashion, travel and other lifestyle trends. Lisa has received three Emmys: two for writing and on-camera performance for her behind-the-scenes series on soap operas entitled “Love in the Afternoon” and her third for her CBS4 report on the “Chefs Challenge” in 2005. In 1996, Lisa was named one of the 10 Best Dressed Women in Miami by the American Cancer Society. She’s involved with numerous charities including the Multiple Sclerosis Society, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, Miami Children’s Health Foundation, Diabetes Research Institute, and Cystic Fibrosis among others. She’s on the Honorary Board for Debbie’s Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer. In 2014 and 2015, Vogue Magazine’s Editor Anna Wintour selected Lisa to the “Vogue 100”, an influential group of leaders known for their distinctive taste in fashion and culture. In 2015, Lisa was honored by the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale Beaux Arts Group with an award for her dedication and commitment to the arts. In 2016, Lisa was awarded the Silver Circle Award from the Suncoast Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS.) The Silver Circle Award recognizes television professionals who have made significant contributions to television over a period of 25 years or more. Also in that year, Lisa was honored by the Columbus High School CCNN Live student broadcast program with the Media Excellence Award for “Best Entertainment Reporter.” Lisa’s professional career began in 1986 as Communications Manager for the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. That year, she began her television career at WPLG as a producer. She was named the station’s entertainment reporter in 1988. Following WPLG, Lisa became a national correspondent on the NBC show “Real Life”. She joined WFOR, CBS4 in 2001 as Entertainment and Lifestyle Reporter. Lisa and her husband Bill have two children. She received her Bachelor of Science in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Marketing at the University of Miami.

Mo Rocca is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, host of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, and host and creator of the Cooking Channel’s My Grandmother’s Ravioli, in which he learns to cook from grandmothers and grandfathers across the country. He’s a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!,  spent four seasons as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and four seasons as a correspondent on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Rocca began his career in TV as a writer and producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning PBS children’s series Wishbone. He went on to write and produce other children’s series, including ABC’s Pepper Ann and Nickelodeon’s The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss. He is the author of All the Presidents’ Pets, a historical novel about White House pets. In Mobituaries (Simon & Schuster), the journalist, humorist, and history buff profiles the people who have long fascinated him. In these pages, Rocca chronicles the stories of the people who made a difference, but whose lives—for some reason or another—were never truly examined. There’s Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense lit the fuse for the American Revolution—and whose paltry obit summed up his life thusly: “He had lived long, did some good, and much harm.” And then there’s screen icon Audrey Hepburn. How much do we know about her wartime upbringing and how it shaped the woman we fell in love with? And what about Billy Carter and history’s unruly presidential brothers? Were they ne’er-do-well liabilities…or secret weapons? Mobituaries is an insightful and unconventional account of the people who made life worth living for the rest of us, one that asks us to think about who gets remembered, and why.