Mr Kroll was in Dunedin on Saturday morning giving a master class on creating documentary-style travel, adventure and food TV shows, drawing from his career in the industry.
Mr Kroll’s portfolio is long, in terms of time in showbiz and in actual length.
Some of the many projects he has been part of include controversial TV show Amish in the City, two seasons of American Big Brother, and two seasons of the Amazing Race — for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award.
Recently, Mr Kroll has been working on Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, where he gets to work with the man himself.
On Saturday, prospective future show-runners, producers and directors met Mr Kroll to learn the tricks of the trade.
Dunedin was the fifth and final stop of a "world tour", that included Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown.
The tour was organised by Women in Film and Television, whose members made up much of the audience.
He said one of the skills they would be working on was how to make sure the people on any prospective show could interact well, and how to get those results.
"You have to know your show presenter, and know who they can interact with ... many people think they will show up, turn the cameras on and hopefully good things will happen. I don’t like to leave those things to chance."
"Gordon [Ramsay] for example, he doesn’t interact well with yes men or superfans just gushing over him. He likes people who take the piss out of him and who can have that English banter.
"I won’t say he suffers fools lightly, because he doesn’t suffer them at all."
Mr Kroll must have proved himself not part of the fool category because he has "lasted four seasons with the man".
One of his more controversial TV shows was Amish in the City, a 2004 reality TV show centred on a group of Amish teenagers on "rumspringa", a period where youths go out and experience the outside world before deciding whether to be baptised into the Amish church.
The premise, the first of its kind at the time, garnered many complaints, including a letter signed by 51 members of the US Congress protesting the network.
"At the time it was a bit of a ground-breaking show. It led to a tidal wave of shows featuring Amish people without, I think, the same regard or respect for their community as we tried to have."
In his first season of filming The Amazing Race, Mr Kroll followed the cast to New Zealand, where contestants had to travel by campervan from Queenstown to Auckland.
"My job was to travel with the lead teams, so I had to know what was the earliest flight they could get on would be and I would be on that flight."
Campervan may have been the best way to travel for Mr Kroll. Two years ago the American moved to Wellington after seeing much of the world for work.
"It’s lucky for me ... that I’m able to do my job remotely and live in this beautiful country."
