Faculty + Mentors

From the start, the Stephens College low-residency Master of Fine Arts in TV and Screenwriting has focused on providing access to the absolute best faculty. These are real working writers and highly successful industry professionals who have broken new ground and built esteemed careers in the TV and screenwriting industry. In addition, notable writers and showrunners speak regularly at workshops for a comprehensive, thorough and dynamic learning environment.

I really had no idea that the bulk of being a screenwriter in this industry has as much to do with how you can connect in a room as it does with the quality of your writing. This lesson, along with the coaching we received from Laura Brennan, has made a huge difference in the way I understand the industry.

Take the time to read about our faculty below and to follow what they are up to on the MFA Facebook.

 

Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director

Rosanne Welch, Ph.D., serves as executive director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, where she created a set of History of Screenwriting courses and teaches courses in One-Hour Drama. Her television writing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABC News: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. Welch edited When Women Wrote Hollywood (2018), which was named runner up for the Susan Koppelman Award honoring the best multi-authored or edited book in feminist studies by the Popular Culture Association. She co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia (named to both the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List and the list of Best Historical Materials by the American Library Association).  Her books include Why the Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Popular Culture (2016) and American Women's History on Film (2023).  Welch has also published chapters in Doctor Who – New Dawn: Essays on the Jodie Whittaker era (2020) and the forthcoming “Handled with Care: Anne Frank on Film” chapter in Stories of the Holocaust Onstage and In Concert: Art for Healing and Renewal.

Welch serves as book reviews editor for the Journal of Screenwriting and on the editorial board for Written By magazine and the California Journal and writes a monthly column for Script Magazine "celebrating the female screenwriters who came before us.". In 2019 she was elected to the executive committee of the International Screenwriting Research Network for a two-year term and she’s bringing the international 2023 Screenwriting Research Network Conference to the Stephens campus next September . You can listen to her talk, “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room,” from the TEDxCPP and find her other recorded lectures on her YouTube channel.

 

Faculty Mentors

 

Lisa Bao

Lisa Bao most recently worked as a Co-Producer/Writer on NANCY DREW (CW) where she rose from staff writer to co-producer during its four seasons. During her tenure on Nancy Drew, Lisa wrote and produced 8 episodes of the hit series, which streams internationally on HBO Max. Prior to staffing on Nancy Drew, Lisa was a 2018 CAPE New Writers Mentoring Program Fellow and 2018/2019 CBS Writers Mentoring Program Fellow. Both fellowships launched her career in television and staffed her on her first show. In a former life, Lisa worked as a civil litigator in a variety of law firms dealing with a diverse range of legal issues from sports law, family law, trust and estates, to real estate. Her experiences as a lawyer frequently inspires her writing. Lisa is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. She is also a member of the State Bar of California and the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW). 

 

Laura Brennan

Laura Brennan’s eclectic writing career includes television, film, theater, web series, fiction and news. Behind the scenes, she has helped production companies develop movies, TV pilots and limited series. She has taught pitching workshops to executives at Netflix and Film Victoria, as well as MFA programs and undergraduate classes at universities including Stephens College, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Boston University and National University. A graduate of Yale University, Brennan has won awards for journalism, television writing and fiction. Her children’s book, Nana Speaks Nanese, tackles the confusing changes brought on by dementia in a reassuring and straightforward way. She hopes it will help families facing a diagnosis of dementia open up a conversation with their young children. Her web series Faux Baby is also for parents, but it is definitely not for children—or even safe for work.

 

Thomas Dean Donnelly 

Thomas Dean Donnelly has been a professional screenwriter for over 25 years. In that time he has written on projects that have grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. He has worked on franchises from Voltron to Uncharted, and from Marvel’s Doctor Strange to The Walking Dead. His feature credits include Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey, and Conan the Barbarian. He has also delved into video game writing, and teaching stints at Stephens College and the University of Southern California, where he earned his Masters in Cinema Production at the start of his career. Thomas has also battled writer’s block for many of those 25 years, a battle that led him to develop the Superdraft writing process.

 

Rashaan Dozier-Escalante

Rashaan Dozier-Escalante '19 is a former U.S. Army Reservist and Senior Physical Security Specialist/Analyst with Top Secret Clearance for the federal government. A writer and director of documentaries, public service announcements, and training media for non-profits and the federal government, she's completed internships on HBO's West World and Big Little Lies. In 2018, Rashaan and her pilot McKenna's Callings were chosen to participate in both the Producers’ Guild of America Diversity Program and the CBS Writing Mentorship Program. Currently, she is a story editor on the CBS drama series SEAL Team. A graduate of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, Rashaan is a member of the WGA and a director member of the DGA.

 

Maureen Driscoll

Maureen Driscoll is a comedy writer whose television credits include Jimmy Kimmel Live, the MADtv re-boot and the Nickelodeon Game Show BrainSurge, which earned her a Daytime Emmy nomination. She has also written animation and game shows, and her ten-minute play The Last Laugh had its Los Angeles debut in January 2020, right before no one was allowed to sit inside a cramped theater anymore. She is the author of twenty-five books and made her television acting debut in January 2023 at the tender age of 59. She has an MA in legislative affairs from George Washington University and a BA in journalism from the University of Oregon. She’s a member of both the WGA West and SAG-AFTRA. 

 

 

 

 

 

Maria Escobedo

Maria Escobedo is a film and television writer with credits including Grey’s Anatomy, Hulu’s East Los High and the indie film Rum and Coke, which she wrote and directed. She’s developed movies and pilots for Lifetime, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon. She also has written for animated kids’ TV, including Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Elena of Avalor, Special Agent Oso and Nina’s World, which earned her a Humanitas Award nomination. Escobedo is currently writing for Amazon’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Netflix’s What-To-Doodles and Nickelodeon’s Santiago of the Seas. She also has developed original pilots for Amazon Kids. Escobedo served as chair of the Latino Writers Committee at the Writers Guild of America West for five years, and teaches writing at University of Southern California and California State University, Los Angeles.

 

Dawn Comer Jefferson

Dawn Comer Jefferson is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer. On television, Comer Jefferson wrote on the CBS family drama Judging Amy, served as writer/consulting producer on MTV's teen drama, South of Nowhere, freelanced on the CBS hit NCIS, and developed a drama pilot at NBC Universal Studios. She was nominated for an Emmy for writing the Fox-animated family film, Our Friend, Martin, and for the last nine years has written Emmy-winning arts programming for PBS, performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. As a non-fiction writer, Comer Jefferson has written about children, families and public policy issues for national print and online media including Garnet News, Working Mother, Fit Pregnancy Magazine and MomsRising, and her essays have been featured in the anthologies A Woman Alone (Seal Press) and Go Girl (Eighth Mountain Press). She adapted, produced and directed the eight-part NPR radio series adaptation of the biography Maggie's American Dream, co-wrote the nonfiction book Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family, and the African American historical children’s fiction, The Promise. Visit her website.

 

Shannon Dobson

Shannon Dobson is a screenwriting instructor, television writer and independent filmmaker. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America, a graduate of Northwestern University, the Disney/ABC Writing Program, and the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, where her thesis project was to research and compare the efficacy of various methodologies in the teaching of screenwriting.  Shannon’s television writing credits include Once Upon a Christmas Miracle (Hallmark), Crash & Bernstein (Disney), and Baby Daddy (Freeform), and as well as hundreds of episodes of reality TV, including fan faves House Hunters and House Hunters International. Shannon just completed production on her directorial debut, I Live On Your Visits, a short film which she adapted with permission from the Dorothy Parker short story of the same name.

Omaira Galarza

Puerto Rican born Omaira Galarza is an army brat who grew up on-and-off military bases in New York, Germany and Texas. As the daughter of a spy, Omaira has always had a zest for investigation, but decided to use that curiosity to create fiction. Omaira has written for the International Emmy Award-winning series THE KITCHEN MUSICAL (AXN Asia) in addition to EAST LOS HIGH (HULU), TERESA (STARZ), writer/director David Ayer’s FAMILY CRIMES (STARZ), and the GREY’S ANATOMY spinoff STATION 19 (ABC). She currently writes for a YA mobile RPG by Landshark Games, and is a screenwriting instructor/consultant at Script Anatomy in Los Angeles. She is also a consultant / mentor for talent development programs such as Warner Media Access and the NHMC's Series Screenwriters Program. 

 

Gus Krieger

Gus Krieger is a writer-director-producer of stage and screen. His first-produced feature screenplay “The Killing Room” starred Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton, Academy Award nominee Chloe Sevigny, and premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. In 2012, Krieger served as associate producer on the horror feature Would You Rather starring Brittany Snow and Jeffrey Combs, and produced Fender Bender for Mark Pavia and the Chiller Network in 2016. Krieger’s feature films include the philosophical thriller The Binding and the 2018 Slamdance Audience Award-winning hip-hop drama My Name Is Myeisha. Additionally, Krieger is the associate artistic director of The Porters of Hellsgate, which will become the first Los Angeles theatre company to produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Follow him on Twitter @MrGusK.

 

Phil Lazebnik

Philip LaZebnik has written screenplays for films including Pocahontas, Mulan (which won the 1998 Annie Award for best animation screenplay), The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar, Asterix and the Vikings. He wrote the book for the musical "Fairy Tale" about Hans Christian Andersen with songs by Stephen Schwartz, and wrote the book and lyrics for "Oktoberfest: the Musical" with music by Harold Faltermeyer. In collaboration with Mads Æbeløe Nielsen he wrote the book for the theatrical musical version of Djævelens lærling (or The Devil's Apprentice), a best-selling Danish fantasy novel of the same name by Kenneth B. Andersen, with songs and music by Madeline Myers. He wrote the book for DreamWorks' theatrical musical version of The Prince of Egypt with songs by Stephen Schwartz, which premiered at the Dominion Theatre in London's West End February 25, 2020. LaZebnik also wrote episodes for Wings, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. LaZebnik has served on the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America West (2001–02) and the Writers Branch Executive Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2001–03).

 

Jennifer Maisel

Jennifer Maisel most recently developed an original pilot called “The 626” with Super Deluxe and adapted two Jane Green novels—Tempting Fate and To Have and to Hold, which aired in June. She currently is working on a two-hour about campus rape and institutional betrayal with Just Singer Entertainment. Her screenplay “Lost Boy” was filmed starring Virginia Madsen. She wrote The Assault and The March Sisters for Mar Vista Entertainment and Double Wedding for Jaffe Braunstein. She has written movies for NBC, ABC, MTV and Lifetime, was a staff writer on the television series Related, wrote a pilot for ABC Family and an animated feature for Disney. Maisel has developed original pilots with Bunim-Murray, Ineffable, Stun Media and MomentumTV and co-created the critically acclaimed web series Faux Baby with Laura Brennan and Rachel Leventhal. The screenplay adaptation of her play The Last Seder won Showtime’s Tony Cox Screenwriting Award, meriting her a month’s stay in a haunted farmhouse at the Nantucket Screenwriter’s Colony. A graduate of Cornell University and NYU’s Dramatic Writing program, Maisel is also an award-winning playwright whose Eight Nights premiered at Antaeus Theatre in October 2019; the play is currently part of a nationwide event called 8 Nights of Eight Nights, raising funds and awareness for HIAS. She has taught playwriting at University of Southern California and guest-lectured around the country.

 

Deborah Starr Seibel

Deborah Starr Seibel is a multiple award-winning journalist and screenwriter. For the past eight years, she has been an instructor at University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts in the John Wells Division of Writing for Film & Television. In addition, she serves as a mentor for Stephens College’s MFA in Screenwriting program. In prime-time television, Starr Seibel recently sold two pilots to CBS and is credited with four years on staff. During those years, she wrote six episodes for the final season of NBC's Sisters and spent three additional years on the staff of Promised Land, the spin-off to CBS's Touched by An Angel. She has also written episodes for Mysterious Ways and 21 Jump Street.

As a television reporter, Starr Seibel won a George Foster Peabody award for investigative journalism, two Emmy Awards, and first place from the Associated Press for one of her documentaries. As a print journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Parade and USA Today. In addition, she is a long-time national correspondent for TV Guide.

In 2010 she was awarded a University of Southern California Annenberg Fellowship to receive her master’s degree in Specialized Journalism (The Arts).

 

Amy Toomin Straus

Amy Toomin Straus holds a B.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a veteran TV writer, having written on the staff of 10 shows, including Friends and Grounded for Life. She also has co-written pilots for ABC and CBS and a screenplay of Malcolm in the Middle. Most recently she has created branded content for Zillow and is in production on a documentary.

 

 

Maggy Torres-Rodriguez

Maggy Torres-Rodriguez is a Cuban-American writer/director and video editor from Miami, FL.  She received her Bachelors in Film Production and Directing from the University of Miami, and holds an M.F.A. in Writing for Film and Television from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. In 2017, Maggy wrote an award-winning short film called "Palante" that was shot and produced in Cuba, and her feature and pilot scripts have placed in many screenwriting competitions, including the Austin Film Festival, ScreenCraft Pilot Drama Competition, and ScreenCraft True Story & Public Domain Competitions.  Her latest film, “Pallavi,” a dystopian sci-fi about a couple dealing with the loss of their son, made its world premiere at the Miami Film Festival in March 2021 and landed at the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner that same year. Maggy Torres-Rodriguez is a recipient of the Sundance Latiné Fellowship, along with being a Lab Mentor for the M Film Lab by OpenScreenplay, a screenwriting competition meant to amplify BIPOC + Queer voices in storytelling. She currently teaches screenwriting at USC, Chapman, and Stephen’s College – and is slated to direct three different projects in 2024.

Valerie Woods

Valerie C. Woods is a writer/producer in television and film, and also is a publisher, editor and author. Woods currently is co-executive producer/writer on the critically acclaimed television drama series Queen Sugar, created by Ava DuVernay and airing on Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). She also has been adjunct faculty for Stephens’ Master of Fine Arts in TV and Screenwriting program since 2015.

Recently, Woods served as creative director for Syd Field – The Art of Visual Storytelling. She is one of four Syd Field Screenwriting Method Instructors trained by Mr. Field. She also wrote the screen adaptation of the novel Tempest Rising by Diane McKinney-Whetstone, with the production company of actor/director Phylicia Rashad.

In 2013, Woods founded the independent press BooksEndependent, which has published five titles, including Woods’ novel Katrin’s Chronicles: The Canon of Jacqueléne Dyanne. She also is the author of Something for Everyone (50 Original Monologues), which is published by Samuel French, Inc. In 2016, Woods produced a series of staged readings of scripts adapted from literary work via Staged/Lit.

During Woods' 20+ years as a member of Writers Guild of America West, she has written on one-hour drama series for CBS, Lifetime, and Showtime. Credits include consulting producer/writer for the drama series Soul Food on Showtime Network and co-executive producer/writer on the drama series Any Day Now on Lifetime Network. Her episode “Family is Family” was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. Her television career began after winning a fellowship with Walt Disney Studios. Visit her website.

 

Jon Vandergriff

Jon Vandergriff received his MFA in screenwriting at the University of Southern California and immediately segued into professional sitcom writing with his debut freelance script for the ABC hit show, Coach. That was followed by a six-year stint on the even bigger ABC hit, Home Improvement, where he rose from staff writer to supervising producer. He attained the title of co-executive producer on the popular WB show Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Along the way, Vandergriff wrote sitcom pilots for NBC and The WB and also has had two screenplays optioned by Hollywood-based production companies. A lifelong lover of board games, Vandergriff also is a board game inventor who has had three games published, including Anger Management and A Way with Words, which also is an app and was recently picked up by Electronic Arts to publish on their website, pogo.com. He currently teaches screenwriting and television writing at Stephens College, Chapman University, California State University, Fullerton, and California State University, Northridge.

 

Frequent Guest Lecturers

 

Carol Barbee

Carol Barbee is a television writer and producer who has been executive producer and showrunner on series such as Touch, Three Rivers and Jericho. She was a writer/producer on Falling Skies for TNT. She began her career as an actress, appearing on L.A. Law, as well as movies such as Die Hard 2. In 2001, Barbee wrote her first credited script for NBC’s Providence and has since written for Judging Amy (where she also served as executive producer), Close to Home and Swingtown.

 

Allan Heinberg

Allan Heinberg is the screenwriter of the film Wonder Woman. His television writing and producing credits include The Naked Truth, Party Of Five, Sex And The City, Gilmore Girls, The O.C., Grey's Anatomy, Looking and Scandal. Most recently, Heinberg developed, wrote and ran ABC’s The Catch, starring Mireille Enos and Peter Krause. For Marvel Comics, Heinberg created and wrote Young Avengers and its sequel, Avengers: The Children’s Crusade with co-creator/artist Jim Cheung. For DC Comics, Heinberg co-wrote JLA: Crisis Of Conscience with Geoff Johns (art by Chris Batista), and re-launched Wonder Woman with artists Terry and Rachel Dodson.

 

Alexa Junge

After receiving her MFA in NYU’s Dramatic Writing program, Junge wrote for Friends from 1994 to 1999. Her episode, The One Where Everybody Finds Out, earned her an Emmy nomination for Best Writing for a Comedy Series. Other television work includes: Grace and Frankie, The Party, Best Friends Forever, The United States of Tara, The West Wing and Sex and the City. As a screenwriter, her film work includes: Rapunzel Unbraided, Lilo & Stitch 2 and Mulan II (with Jeanine Tesori). Junge’s plays have been produced at Goodspeed Opera House, Studio Arena Theater, Playwrights Horizons’ Lab and The Depot Theater. Her work has been developed at The Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, The Public Theater Lab/Ars Nova, MacDowell Colony and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She is a writer-contributor to NPR’s This American Life and was a performer on TAL’s What I Learned from Television tour. Alexa is co-creating a fictional podcast for This American Life and developing pilots for Anonymous Content and Starz. Her play Fingersmith was produced at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2016 and The American Repertory Theater in 2017, and is headed to New York next fall.

 

Niceole Levy

Niceole Levy is a television writer and producer who has written for Ironside (2013 reboot), Allegiance, The Mysteries of Laura, Shades of Blue, and a new project with a 2018 premiere date. She also is currently co-writing a feature with former Allegiance showrunner and director George Nolfi. An alum of the CBS Writers Mentoring Program and NBC’s Writers on the Verge program, Levy also teaches at the University of Southern California in the Cinema-Television program.

 

Glen Mazzara

Glen Mazzara was the creator and show runner of the A&E series Damien. He was executive producer and showrunner for two seasons of The Walking Dead, and has written and produced for The Shield, Nash Bridges, Hawthorne and Crash. He has written The Overlook Hotel, a prequel to The Shining, which is currently in development. He is co-chair of the WGA Diversity Advisory Group.

 

Kathleen McGhee-Anderson

Kathleen McGhee-Anderson is a writer of television, stage and screen. She was the executive producer of Soul Food on Showtime and for four seasons was the executive producer/showrunner of the critically-acclaimed series Lincoln Heights (ABC/Family), which garnered the NAACP Image Award for Best Drama. Her television writing credits include Touched by an Angel, 413 Hope Street, Little House on the Prairie and Any Day Now. McGhee-Anderson has written feature films for Columbia Pictures, Paramount Motion Pictures, Bruckheimer Films and Twentieth Century Fox Films. Jersey Films/Sony produced her film Sunset Park and the movie The Color of Courage, dealing with her grandparents' landmark Supreme Court Housing battle (in which racially restrictive housing covenants were abolished throughout America), was produced by Studios USA. Her TV drama The Story of Blind Tom (PBS) garnered the first of several NAACP Image Awards and the Ruby Slipper Award for Children’s Programming.

 

Barbara Nance

Barbara Nance is a television writer and producer who teaches television writing at the University of Southern California. She has written and produced for The Client List and House of Lies. She has been on staff and written for hour-long dramas such as In Plain Sight, Flash Forward, Crosstown, Army Wives, Blade, Threshold and Crossing Jordan. She has also taught and been a volunteer mentor for the WGA Veterans Writing Project.

 

Allison Schroeder

Allison Schroeder is an American screenwriter. She co-wrote the film Hidden Figures with Theodore Melfi, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, wrote Christopher Robin (2018), Pineapple Express (2008) and Frozen II (2019).

 

Jessica Sharzer

Jessica Sharzer holds a master's degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where her thesis film The Wormhole won the NYU Wasserman Award, the NY Magazine Award of Excellence and the Student Academy Award. She made her feature writing and directing debut with Speak, starring Kristen Stewart and Steve Zahn. It premiered at Sundance in 2004 and was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and a Directors Guild Award. She has since developed feature films for Universal, HBO, MTV, Fox and Lionsgate. In television, Sharzer spent four seasons as a writer-producer on the acclaimed FX series American Horror Story. She wrote the three-hour musical Dirty Dancing, which aired in May 2017 on ABC. She was a co-executive producer on the first season of Lee Daniels’ drama Star on Fox. Sharzer also has developed drama pilots for CBS, FOX, MTV and ABC networks.

 

Linda Woolverton

Linda Woolverton is a screenwriter, playwright and novelist, whose most prominent works include the screenplays and books of several acclaimed Disney films. She was the first woman to write an animated feature for Disney by writing the screenplay of Beauty and the Beast, the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. She also wrote the screenplay of The Lion King and the 2014 hit Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie.