The eiACE Mission
eiACE Power-Up Webinars
Power Up Your Premise, Power Up Your Story, Power Up Your Career. The Entertainment Industry Aces have a wide-range of skills and experience in all areas of development and production in film and television. These exclusive live webinars offer a thorough sampling of their expertise with 20-minute in-depth courses on varying topics. Not able to view the live webinar at its scheduled time? Don’t worry – the webinar recording will be available for you to stream or download at your convenience following the event.
Our Members

Will Akers
Author of Your Screenplay Sucks! 100 Ways To Make It Great, William M. Akers is a WGA Lifetime Member and has had three feature films produced from his screenplays. He has written for studios, independent producers, and the major television networks. Akers teaches screenwriting in the Motion Pictures Program at Belmont University and gives writing workshops around the world, including London, Beijing, and Paris. He speaks French and was a Jeopardy! contestant. He didn’t win. View Full Bio

Pilar Alessandra
Pilar Alessandra is the director of the writing program On the Page® host of the popular On the Page Podcast and author of “The Coffee Break Screenwriter.” Pilar started her career as Senior Story Analyst at DreamWorks and, in 2001, opened the On the Page Writers’ Studio in Los Angeles. Her students and clients are working writers and producers who have written for Homeland, The 100, Dear White People, Grey’s Anatomy, Silicon Valley, The Chi and more. View Full Bio

Troy DeVolld
Troy DeVolld is a reality television producer and consultant who has worked on dozens of reality programs including genre milestones like The Osbournes, The Surreal Life, The Bachelor, Dancing With the Stars, Basketball Wives and Hollywood Game Night. He has more recently been involved with the 2020 HBO Max series The Event and his own upcoming feature documentary, Remember We're Not Here. View Full Bio

Jennifer Dornbush
Jennifer Dornbush is a screenwriter, author, speaker, consultant, and forensic science specialist. She has been teaching and script consulting since 1997 and regularly leads seminars and workshops on screenwriting basics, writing for Hollywood, crime fiction, forensics, death investigation, and the creative life. View Full Bio

Pamela Douglas
Pamela Douglas has been honored with the Humanitas Prize and awards including Emmys, Writers Guild, and American Women in Radio and Television. Her book Writing the TV Drama Series is considered the authoritative source internationally, and the 4th Edition is coming in 2018. Her other book The Future of Television: Your Guide to Creating TV in the New World was published in 2015. She is also a Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. View Full Bio

Diane Drake
Diane Drake is an accomplished screenwriter, consultant, instructor, speaker and author. Her produced original screenplays include ONLY YOU, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Marisa Tomei, and WHAT WOMEN WANT, starring Mel Gibson. Her original script for ONLY YOU sold for $1 million, and WHAT WOMEN WANT is the second highest grossing romantic comedy of all time (Box Office Mojo). View Full Bio

Eric Edson
Eric Edson has written seventeen feature screenplays on assignment for such companies as Sony, Warner Brothers, Disney, 20th Fox, Lifetime, CBS, and TNT. Eric is a tenured Professor of Screenwriting, and Emeritus Director of the renowned MFA in Screenwriting Program at California State University, Northridge. His bestselling book “THE STORY SOLUTION: 23 Actions All Great Heroes Must Take” is also a #1 Bestseller in three categories on China Amazon. Now in partnership with FINAL DRAFT®, Eric’s powerful new paradigm for screen story structure, “Hero Goal Sequencing®”, is included in the new FINAL DRAFT 10. View Full Bio

Chad Gervich
Chad Gervich is a television producer, bestselling author, and award-winning playwright. He has written, produced, and developed shows for nearly every network and studio in Hollywood. He has written three books, including“Small Screen, Big Picture: A Writers Guide to the TV Business” and “How To Manage Your Agent: A Writers Guide to Hollywood Representation.” Chad has taught at workshops and universities around the globe, including UCLA, Drexel, Cal State Fullerton, the Warner Bros. Writers Workshop, the FOX Writers Initiative, and the Singapore Media Academy. View Full Bio

Jen Grisanti
International speaker Jen Grisanti is an acclaimed Story/Career Consultant at Jen Grisanti Consultancy Inc., Writing Instructor for Writers on the Verge at NBC, a former 12-year studio executive, including VP of Current Programming at CBS/Paramount, blogger for The Huffington Post and author of the books, Story Line: Finding Gold In Your Life Story and TV Writing Tool Kit and her new book, Change Your Story, Change Your Life: A Path To Your Success. View Full Bio

Richard Hatem
Richard Hatem has a B.A in Film Production from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and Television. He has written screenplays including “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory” and “The Mothman Prophecies.” He co-created the ABC/Touchstone television series “Miracles” as well as the ABC series “The Gates”. He has written and produced episodes of the CW’s “Supernatural” and “The Secret Circle”. He also executive produced the 2006 Sci-Fi Channel mini-series event “The Lost Room.” View Full Bio

Traci Tyne Hilton
Writer and speaker Traci Tyne Hilton teaches indie publishing and marketing at conferences and writers groups around the country. Learn more about her cozy mystery series and her publishing classes at www.tracihilton.com. View Full Bio

Lee Jessup
Lee Jessup is a career coach for professional and emerging screenwriters, a twice-published, best-selling author, and consultant whose expertise have been utilized by major studios and networks. View Full Bio

Steve Kaplan
For years, Steve Kaplan has been the industry’s most sought-after expert on comedy. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other top universities Steve created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan’s Punch Line Theatre. Steve has consulted with Disney, DreamWorks Animation, Aardman Animation, HBO and others, and has taught his seminar in LA, New York, London, Paris, Kiev, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. He's the author of The Hidden Tools Of Comedy and The Comic Hero's Journey (published by Michael Wiese Productions). View Full Bio

Carole Kirschner
Carole Kirschner is the Director of the Writers Guild of America’s Showrunner Training Program and the CBS Diversity Writers Mentoring Program, as well as an author and international speaker. In her role as an entertainment career coach she helps aspiring writers, producers, directors and executives navigate Hollywood as they bust through barriers, break in and move up in the business. Her book, Hollywood Game Plan: How to Land a Job in Film, TV and Digital Entertainment is published by Michael Wiese Publishing. View full bio

Danny Manus
Danny Manus is one of the most in-demand script consultants as CEO of No BullScript Consulting and author of “No B.S. for Screenwriters: Advice from the Executive Perspective.” He was ranked one of the “Cream of the Crop” script consultants in CS Magazine and named one of ScreenCraft’s “25 People Writers Should Follow on Twitter”. His clients include finalists or winners of the ABC/Disney Fellowship, Austin Film Festival, PAGE Awards, Nashville Film Festival, Scriptapalooza, etc. View Full Bio

Dara Marks
Dara Marks, Ph.D. is a leading international script consultant, seminar leader, and author of one of the top selling books on creative writing, Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc. She has specialized in the analysis of the modern screenplay for the past three decades, and Creative Screenwriting Magazine consistently rated her one of the top script consultants in Hollywood. Currently, Dara leads seminars world-wide and is an adjunct professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. View Full Bio

David Misch
David Misch has been a comic folksinger, stand-up comedian and screenwriter. He’s written, created and/or produced programs for all the major networks and many of the major (and minor) cable outlets, including the multiple-Emmy-nominated “Mork & Mindy,” the Emmy-losing “Duckman,” the Emmy-ignored “Police Squad!,” the Emmy-engorged “Saturday Night Live,” and the Emmy-ineligible “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” View Full Bio

Ellen Sandler
Ellen Sandler received an Emmy nomination for her work as a Writer/Co-Executive Producer of the CBS hit series, Everybody Loves Raymond. She has been on staff of many prime time half hours, and has developed more than a dozen pilots. She is the author of The TV Writers Workbook, a top selling handbook for writers and used as a text in many screenwriting programs both in the US and abroad. View Full Bio

Linda Seger
In 1981, Dr. Linda Seger created and defined the career of Script Consultant. Since then, she has consulted on over 2,000 scripts including over 50 produced feature films and over 35 produced television projects. Her ten books remain staples for writers and many universities use them as textbooks in screenwriting classes. Linda is best known for the title Making a Good Script Great. View Full Bio

Mark W. Travis
Mark W. Travis is regarded by Hollywood and independent film professionals internationally as the world’s leading teacher and consultant on the art and craft of film directing and storytelling. Winner of over 30 directorial awards and affectionately called “the director’s director,” Mark is always in high demand on film projects worldwide. View Full Bio

Jennifer Van Sijll
Jennifer Van Sijll is the best selling author of “Cinematic Storytelling.” Her book has sold over 100,000 copies, has been translated into 10 languages, and has been adopted by film schools around the world. Jennifer has an MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and taught screenwriting for 15 years at SFSU. Most recently she has worked for China Central Television in Beijing as a story editor. She has been a featured speaker at Pixar, Nestle and Google as well as at screenwriting conferences globally. View Full Bio

Alan Watt
Best-selling author and award-winning filmmaker, Alan Watt founded L.A. WRITERS’ LAB in 2002 as a place for writers to learn the process of marrying the wildness of their imagination to the rigor of story structure. His 90-DAY NOVEL and 90-DAY SCREENPLAY telecourse workshops attract writers from around the world. Many of his students have gone on to become successful screenwriters, showrunners, bestselling authors, and more relaxed human beings. View Full Bio

Kathie Fong Yoneda
Kathie Fong Yoneda is an entertainment consultant specializing in development and marketing of live action and animated film, television, literary, and web projects. A former exec at Disney, Touchstone, Island Pictures, and Disney TV Animation, she has taught workshops worldwide. Her clientele includes several award-winning writers and she is the author of The Script-Selling Game. Kathie serves on the board of directors for Imago (French production company) and The LAWEBFEST. View Full Bio

Book A Member
eiACE Members have consulted for or lectured at hundreds of festivals, workshops, and conferences around the world. For help with matching the best Entertainment Industry ACE with your organization or event, please contact us.