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Ellen Snortland
Ellensnortland@mac.com
626. 798.8421
Ellen Snortland is an accomplished author, journalist, actor and self-defense advocate/activist for women. She is a frequent contributor to Ms. Magazine, a Huffington Post blogger, is a columnist for the Pasadena Weekly and a tireless advocate for the physical safety of women and girls. She has worked in the media and entertainment industries as a writer/producer/director/commentator/ actor. She was a co-founder of the first all woman theater company in the U.S., Theater of Process of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. She is also a graduate of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles with a Juris Doctorate degree and passed the California State Bar in 1978.
Her work as a self-defense advocate/instructor and the author of “Beauty Bites Beast – Awakening the Warrior Within Women and Girls” has been featured on Dateline NBC. The premise of Beauty Bites Beast (BBB) is that all females are capable of defending themselves and their loved ones if they learn how. She is now producing BBB as a feature documentary. (View the trailer at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1zP4Mh6tXR0)
In addition, she performs her acclaimed one woman show “Now That She’s Gone” - a comic memoir about growing up Norwegian American in Colorado and South Dakota – throughout the US and is using proceeds from it to raise financing for her film. “Now That She’s Gone” was nominated for a 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Gloria Steinem says, “Ellen says I’m the ‘grandmother’ of this play, but I’m not crazy enough to think that it was my planting of a seed when in fact it is her enormous talent… She has a gift for being serious and funny, making
you laugh and understand at the same time. The first time I saw it, I brought two friends who were visiting New York City from Kenya — a mother and a daughter — to see it, and they loved it too; it’s universal.”
Ms. Snortland has been an attendee at United Nations world conferences in Beijing, China and Durban, South Africa and annual UN meetings as a UNA delegate, co-chair of the Fifty-Fifty Leadership and journalist. Ms. Snortland believes that “Think Globally, Act Locally,” is vital for women and girls. She says, “There’s nothing more local than one’s own body.” She is a member of NOW, a board member of Consumer Watchdog (formerly called the “Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights), the Action Committee for Women in Prison, the former president of the United Nations Association Pasadena-Foothills Chapter, “Goodwill” Ambassador for the National Woman’s History Project and popular speaker on women’s issues in person on radio and television.
Her website address is: www.snortland.com. She lives in Altadena, CA, with her beloved husband, Ken Gruberman and their two dogs, Oso and Bucco.
