October Meeting of the Twilight Club
Title: U.S. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE: WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THAT? Speaker: ELLEN SNORTLAND
ABOUT ELLEN:
Ellen Snortland is an author, lawyer, performer, coach, and lifelong advocate for women.
Trained as a performer at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, she co-founded the first all-woman theater company in the nation, Theater of Process, which was featured in an early issue of Ms. Magazine. She also co-wrote and directed shows that received rave reviews in the Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. As a performer, she accomplished what many fail to do: she was a working actor in commercials and a regular on two series, and has performed as a singer and stand-up comic. After receiving her B.A. cum laude in theater and film at U.C., Irvine., attending law school at Loyola, Los Angeles, gave her a keen understanding of women's rights as well as responsibilities.
In her professional coaching and consultant role, Ms. Snortland was able to combine her legal counseling expertise, multi-faceted life experience, enthusiasm and people skills to teach others to accomplish career goals. She worked as a senior consultant and coach for Impact Studios and Workshops for eight years, working with hundreds of clients, ranging from fledgling singers, frustrated homemakers and corporate lawyers to highly accomplished writer/producers (and everything in between) to increase and hone their productivity through highly personalized one-on-one motivational and job skills coaching.
She is the author of Beauty Bites Beast: Awakening the Warrior Within Women and Girls (Trilogy Books, Pasadena, 1998), and has been featured on National Public Radio and Dateline NBC. A weekly columnist with the Pasadena Weekly, Ellen Snortland delivers social commentary in her popular column "Consider This..." Snortland has published commentary in the L.A. Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other papers across the country. She is a contributor to the anthology, Sexual Harassment: Women Speak Out. In 1993, she became a member of the Betty Friedan think tank at U.S.C.
She is on the Board of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and the United Nation's Association Pasadena-Foothill Chapter. She attended the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum as a U.N.A. delegate and as press, covered the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. She also covered the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in August 2001. She has received grants from the Better World Campaign, in 2003 and 2004, to cover the U.N.'s 47th and 48th Commissions on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York City. Ms. Snortland was on the part-time faculty in the Communication Studies Department at California State University, Los Angeles. She is also a contributing writer to Ms. Magazine. She is currently directing a documentary based on her book, "Beauty Bites Beast/La Bella Muerde a la Bestia," a bilingual film.