Resume, Experience & Acheivements

S t e p h a n i e  E r i c s s o n
Writer & Editor

550 West Sandhurst Drive Suite 106
(651) 307-7719


SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS



Writing & Editing

  • Wrote two ground-breaking books still in print fifteen & twenty-one years later
  • Wrote cover stories for major magazines, some of which are reprinted annually in collections of exemplary model essays for college-level English classes nationwide
  • Designed, illustrated & edited three original books
  • Co-wrote sit-com episodes & pilots for major network TV & numerous docudramas and training films
  • Mentored with great American playwright & screenwriter as a story-editor on major mini-series
  • Forged & tempered over 400 aphorisms in client’s work by identifying his core ideas
  • Designed & published the architecture for 2 books, still in print
  • Wrote the treatment for a major network mini-series.
  • Maintained character &story integrity of this mini-series as it was cut from 16 to 4 hours


Advertising & Public Relations
  • Launched new products, in new markets, first-time-breakthrough advertising for 10 years
  • Achieved fluency in a diverse array of vernaculars & audiences from super-computers to kid’s cereals
  •  Ad campaigns succeeded so well that product often sold out before the end of the campaign
  • Won a Clio, among other awards
  • Trained professionally with a NY firm to interview successfully with any kind of host, in any time-slot
  • Toured 22 cities nationally making over 300 appearances on radio, TV & press.
  • Guest hosted several talk-shows.


Managerial &Teaching
 
  • Associate Producer, Freelance, Minneapolis, TV commercials
  • Assistant to Creative Director, Arista Records, New York City
  • Managed a Half-way house for adolescent girls in recovery
  • Supervised all voice-over, music and sound effects on my own ads often writing the lyrics.
  • Managed the art department as assistant to Creative Director of Arista Records in New York
  • Taught writers at Omega Institute in Woodstock, NY & screen writing to adult students


Education & Technical Skills

  • California State University at Northridge, 2 years TV-Film major, Spanish minor
  • University of Minnesota, 3 years Creative Writing major
  • University College of London, summer program for Scholars & Writers
  • Familiar with the following software on both Mac and Window-based computer systems: MS Word, Photoshop, Google Beta web-related apps, digital photography and general design principles.


Awards
 
  • Clio (short list)...Poster & Brochure Public Service 1987
  • Gold Medal...Graphic Arts Awards, 1985
  • Honorable Mention...International Film Festival, 1984
  • Silver Telly...Award National Film and Television Festival, 1992
  • Silver Medal...National Education Film & Video Festival, 1989
  • Gold Cindy Award...American Association of Visual Communications, '92


Employment

  • Self-employed Writer/Editor Saint Paul, MN 01/1981-06/1982 & 06/1987 to Present
  • Campbell Mithun Senior Copywriter Minneapolis, MN 06/1982 to 06/1987
  • On-Belay House Supervisor Wayzata, MN 01/1980 to 12/1980
  • Arista Records Assistant to Creative Director New York, NY 10/1978 to 11/1979



EXPERIENCE




BOOKS (author, editor, illustrator)

  • Companion Through The Darkness, Inner Dialogues on Grief; HarperCollins NY ‘93-present
  • What Is Essential, Thoughts from Antoine de Saint-Exupèry, 2006, (pending)
  • Thou Shalt Not Be Overcome, Meditations of Julian of Norwich, 2006, (pending)
  • Shame Faced, Hazelden (21st printing), 1986-present
  • The Voice, Dr. Stephen Zuckerman, Mitzvah Publishing, 2003-2006 (in progress)
  • Doc, What's Up? Parables for a New Millennium, Zuckerman, Mitzvah Publishing, 2001
  • New Clichés for the 21st Century, Zuckerman, Mitzvah Publishing, 1999


Magazine Articles

  • “The Ways We Lie,” (cover story), Utne Reader, Nov-Dec, 1992
  • “Simply Divine,” Utne Reader, Mar-Apr, 1992
  • “The Agony of Grief,” (cover story), Utne Reader, Sept-Oct, 1991
  • “Private Parts,” (cover story), Clinton Street Quarterly, Spring, 1989
  • “A Kaddish for Charlie,” The Realist, 1979


Advertising Copywriter

  • Campbell Mithun Accounts: 3-M New Household Products, Control Data, Dairy Queen, General Mills, Northwest Bank, Pentax (1983-1987)
  • Freelance Accounts: Abbott- Northwestern Hospital, Fox TV Network, United States Armed Forces Television, US West (Verizon), Winnebago, (1981-1983, 1998-2000)


Public Relations

  • Trained to interview in all media formats, markets & time slots
  • Promoted book on a national book tour of 22 cities~Spring 1993


Screenwriter

  • Mork & Mindy, Paramount Studios/ABC TV, 1978, Co-writer; 2 episodes
  • Arthur “Sandy” Sandeman, NBC TV, 1977, Co-writer; pilot-original sitcom
  • Flight for Life, NBC TV, 1977, Co-writer; pilot,original TV adventure series
  • A Better Time, A Better Place, Community Intervention, 1984 docudrama
  • Another Chance To Change, Johnson Institute, 1991, docudrama, nat’l dist.
  • Unborn Crisis, Fetal Alcohol & Drug Syndromes, United Way, 1989, nat’l dist.
  • Choices & Consequences, Johnson Institute, 1987, docudrama, nat'l dist.


Story Editor

  • Thou Shalt Not Kill, CBS TV/Lonne Elder III, Ltd., 1978, TV movie
  • The Transients, CBS TV/Lonne Elder III, Ltd., 1979, Adapt'n orig movie
  • A Woman Called Moses, NBC/Jaffe Productions, 1978, 4-part mini-series


Supervisory

  • Associate Producer, Freelance, Minneapolis, TV commercials 1981-83
  • Assistant to Creative Director, Arista Records, New York City, 1979
  • Managed a Half-way house for adolescent girls in recovery, 1980


Web Presence

  • Run a Facebook Group called The Companions for my readers of 125 members
  • Run my own blog and that of clients
  • Created Facebook profile pages and blogs for clients


 Literary Agency



References are available upon request






Leadership Assessment


The following is from the Omni-Leadership Agency’s assessment site. I thought these questions were rather good, and so I decided to keep a copy of my answers.

They ask for examples of 4 kinds of leadership:

· Thought Leadership
· Results Leadership
· People Leadership
· Personal Leadership

___________________________

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
·
  • Demonstrate business focus
    Show complex problem solving
    Make insightful and pragmatic decisions
    See bigger picture; identify what matters
    Think and act in an organized and focused manner
Describe the situation and time period over which your accomplishment occurred.

In 1983, I was hired by Carmichael Lynch Advertising Agency to find out everything there was to know about Abbott Northwestern Hospital, who had just become a new client.

I don't think that anyone at CL really thought the Abbott Northwestern account was going to be a money-making account—which was why they outsourced it to me. At the time, NO hospital had ever done any advertising, especially on television, which was where agencies make their money. Public perception of a medical facility that would advertise on TV was tantamount to the ambulance-chasing lawyer. It did not engender trust.

Describe your specific actions or activities and how they contributed to the outcome.

Right away, I discovered Abbott Northwestern Hospital biggest need was that it needed to draw more patients. Financially, it was impossible for hospitals to support themselves on the money paid per bed, for their costs exceeded that. (This was the beginning of the HMO, and Abbott Northwestern Hospital had just become part of LifeSpan, a parent company.) Like most of the hospitals in the country, Abbott Northwestern Hospital had to restructure financially or it would not have been able to stay open.

What I discovered, however, at Abbott Northwestern Hospital was a world-class medical facility with a staff that was so caring and loving that it was real news.

I spent 3 weeks living in the hospital in 5 of their major departments: the Cardiac Unit, the Birthing Center, Neo-Natal Intensive Care, Sister Kenny Rehabilitation, and the Hospice Center.

I interviewed Doctors, medical staff, administrators, patients. I watched open-heart surgery, and found that Abbott did more of them than even the Mayo Clinic. I watched a Supreme Court Judge give birth in the Birthing Center, and witnessed a caesarian section as I held up the father from behind. I held a preemie in the palm of my hand, and watched as the nurses tried to find a vein in a tiny arm. One of the most surprising revelations to me was the joy and peace that permeated throughout the Hospice Center among the staff and the terminal patients whom they helped die with dignity -- all of my preconceived ideas about death and dying were blown away.

Here was a world in itself. A place where they took care of you from womb to tomb. This was a great place. The world had to know about it.

So, I put together stories on each place, little 30 second bits about each that captured the essence of the spirit of the hospital. And I pitched it as the “Loving Arms of Abbott Northwestern Hospital…” proposing that if television commercials were done that captured that soft, caring spirit, it would off-set the negative public perception that made television advertising for medical facilities taboo.

Describe the results, outcomes, or accomplishments achieved.

I sold the Creative Director at Carmichael Lynch on the idea, and they took it to Abbott Northwestern Hospital, who loved it, and bought the concept.

The result was FIRST TIME breakthrough advertising for a hospital, resulting in a rapid increase in the public’s positive perception of Abbott Northwestern Hospital and their facilities, which increased business, and helped keep the doors open. Carmichael Lynch ended up with a money making account too.

The longer term effects of this was the change in the advertising industry, for with the success of the ad campaign for Abbott Northwestern Hospital, ALL medical facilities were now free to advertise on television.
_________________________

PEOPLE LEADERSHIP
  • Create networks
    Build positive relationships
    Care about the views of others
    Influence others
    Articulate views clearly and persuasively
    Collaborate and seek win-win solutions

Describe the situation and time period over which your accomplishment occurred.

1980-1995
In 1980, a group of about 35 people met on a weekly basis at a local Jewish Temple for an AA 12-step group meeting. It was a convenient location on a Wednesday night, and we had become a close-knit group. In June, we were informed that we would not be able to meet there any longer. By the nature of our group and its members, a change of location would almost certainly mean the end of the group, and that was a serious thing for many of the members. I put together a small group of regulars and we met about this problem.

It soon became clear that this was not just a problem of location. Many of the people in the group believed that their lives depended on these meetings. Meetings, like restaurants, have a “j’nais c’est pas” factor—that indescribable quality about them that either attract people or don’t, no matter what the location or decòr. AA meetings, like restaurants, come in all flavors, and there are run-of-the-mill ones and great ones. But when I classify them, I’m not classifying their entertainment value—a great meeting SAVES LIVES. I say this without exaggeration. So we had a serious job ahead.

Describe your specific actions or activities and how they contributed to the outcome.

I was a member of the group that sought and found a new location and then became a core member of the business group who took care of the business of the group for years.

I attended meetings there every week for 14 years, in addition to the monthly business meetings. In addition, I acted as a sponsor to many people who were new to the group and as the group grew from the original 35 to over 150, I was a member of the group who made a decision to begin a second meeting that would begin an hour earlier and would focus on a different format and meet some different needs. I spoke weekly at these meetings and often was the meeting chair for the six-month term.

I acted as a mentor and group conscience leader throughout my membership in this meeting, as well as participating as a regular member. In keeping with the core principles of the program, as a group we agreed that the 12 Traditions of the program would be our guiding principles. It was the group’s responsibility to see that we did not stray from those principles and this was taken very seriously. Once every month, a member of the group spoke about a tradition, and their own personal experience of it. The 12 Traditions briefly are:

1. Our common welfare should come first; person recovery depends on AA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
6. An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every AA group out to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. AA should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. AA, as such ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. AA has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

It was often commented on by the group that the core members were the reason that they were attracted to our group. It was and still is a very dynamic, lively, and healthy group that continues to grow to this day, splintering off into more and more groups. My last count a few years ago was at five new groups that had been born from this parent group. We were very generous in our service work, and the spirit of the group was “Yes!” Everyone threw a dollar into the hat every week, and we had more money than we knew what to do with. The tradition in AA is to have a ZERO balance at the end of each month in the bank account, so after we paid for rent, coffee, books, etc., we donated the rest.

Describe the results, outcomes, or accomplishments achieved.

One can measure the success of the group on how many members it has, or how many groups morphed off from it, but these do not really capture the real success. The measure of a great meeting is the mixture of new members and old members. How many people with advanced sobriety are still coming? How many new-comers are attracted to the meeting? A really healthy meeting will have a mixture of both.
The reason for its success could be found in the integrity of the core group who began the meeting, and the quality of the sobriety that we held ourselves to. Most people go to AA meetings because they have a need to go, but we made it our principle to go to meetings because someone else might just need us—Tradition 5.

I am proud that I was a part of this group. I feel honored that others allowed me to help them through their hard times, and this group was always there for me when I needed them. I left the group when I moved out of the county…
_________________________

RESULTS LEADERSHIP
·
  • Show drive for action
    Willing to take charge
    Persist and make sacrifices
    Strive to achieve and attain results
    Take initiative
    Get things done

Describe the situation and time period over which your accomplishment occurred.

1993-Present Publication of Companion Through The Darkness

I published Companion Through The Darkness, Inner Dialogues on Grief with HarperCollins in Jan of 1993. The advance the publisher gave me was $45,000. The book was going to be released as a HarperPerennial, and would be shelved as a self-help book, which had a shelf life of about six month, if it went the way that most books went in that category. Surprisingly, publishers rarely if ever publicize their books, unless they are NY Times Best Sellers, and most don’t ever get to be NY Times Best Sellers for this very reason, a conundrum that I’ve never really figured out…

My goal was to become a solid “backlister”—meaning that my book may never make it to the NY Times Best Seller List, may never sell in the numbers that those sell in, but it would be ordered consistently in smaller numbers over the years, as it became known, and it would stay on the bookshelves for years.

Describe your specific actions or activities and how they contributed to the outcome.

With $45,000, one cannot do very much publicity, one would think, but I shopped around and researched the markets and the promotional methods for books, and found out that radio was the best and cheapest way to promote. I then hired a publicist in Boston, who booked me out on a 22-city book tour that was spread out over a period of 3 months (I had just given birth to my son, so I couldn’t do it all at once!).

From my days in Hollywood, when I used to book guests onto a talk-show, I knew that it was more complicated than people think to get your idea across over television and radio. You have different audience for different time slots, you have different kinds of shows, the morning drive-time, or the laid-back middle of the night call-in, the public radio interviewer who actually reads a bit of your book, and the game-show host who doesn’t even remember your name, much less the name of your book. Knowing this, I knew that I needed some coaching to faces 22 cities of media, so I found a company in New York who would train me for two days. For $1,500 plus the cost of my transportation, I met them in Chicago, and we rented a hotel room for two days, where they drilled me for 18 hours each day until I could face any kind of host, in any time slot, and no matter what question they asked me, I could get the name of my book into the interview at least three times, the concept of the book and some personality and entertainment hook to boot. I COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS TOUR WITHOUT THEM!!!

I traveled for three months, and did over 300 interviews, and we estimated that I spoke to over 24 million people about my book. The other resource that was an absolute necessity were the author escorts who picked me up at the airport and made sure I made it to every interview in every city and back to the airport in one piece. They were angels.

Describe the results, outcomes, or accomplishments achieved.

The result? My book, now 15 years later, is STILL a solid seller in bookstores, and on Amazon. It consistently gets five stars out of five in reader reviews, and it has helped tens of thousands of people, but if I had not spent my advance on that book tour, it would have gone out of print in six months and it would have helped about three people.
_______________________________
PERSONAL LEADERSHIP
·
Act with integrity
Take responsibility for actions
Seek and act on feedback from others
Follow through on commitments
Demonstrate resilience and adaptability
Desire to learn and develop


Describe the situation and time period over which your accomplishment occurred.
1999-2007 Editing and publishing for Stephen L. Zuckerman, M.D.

Dr. Zuckerman began as a dreamer who did some stand-up comedy and had a lot of notes scribbled down on yellow pads. He had a lot to say and frequented the open mic’s at comedy clubs, which right away told me three very important things:
  1. He had GUTS—stand-up comedy is the hardest kind of performing to do, and anyone who will get out there on the stage more than one time is either a masochist or really dedicated.
  2. He understood timing—which is critical in all writing.
  3. Nothing he had written down would translate on to the page…
The spoken word and the written word are worlds apart, and he needed me to bring them together. I do not say that in an egotistical way, for it is a definitive thing that there are writers who are better than me. However, I have a peculiar skill at writing in a way that ‘reads’ the way that people talk—(not really—if you read the way that people really talk, it wouldn’t make any sense at all!)
Zuckerman wanted to self-publish a book of “clichés.” His clichés. Call them aphorisms. They were all original ideas—his—and most of them were fairly complicated. Some were even funny.

Describe your specific actions or activities and how they contributed to the outcome.

Over an eight year period, I worked with him on three books, (one is yet unfinished), mined and culled, and refined his ideas, and wrote and re-wrote them so that they sounded like him, but were pithy and memorable. The principle at work here is that it is by far more difficult to write short than it is to write long.

I hired and supervised a designer and desk-top publisher to set his books up for publication and worked in very closely with them on the designs and the information architecture. I managed all the trafficking of the edited versions through final press.

Describe the results, outcomes, or accomplishments achieved.

The result was two final self-published books that are superb, and still in print. Dr. Zuckerman and I have a very close working relationship, and the third book, which is yet unfinished, is an autobiography of his that we will finish together.

Over this time, Dr. Zuckerman went from a man who wanted to be a writer to a man who is a writer. He was an apt student and thinker, being open-minded and cooperative in his working style. The two books that we did together represent a concentration of some very big ideas between their covers.

I also believe that it is a major achievement that we are still good friends after three books, because it is not easy to be edited, and Dr. Zuckerman has taken criticism with grace and humility. As an editor, I pulled no punches. I expected no less excellence and integrity from him than I would from myself and I have not been disappointed.

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