Ellen Sandler was nominated for an Emmy as Co-Executive Producer of the CBS series, Everybody Loves Raymond and although she has enjoyed a long and successful television career, her first love has always been theatre. She has worked as a professional since she was sixteen, doing everything from picking up pins on costume room floors to writing, producing and directing in theatres as small as 15 seats and as large as 1,500. She was a performer with the legendary Open Theatre under the direction of Joeseph Chaikin and studied with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof at the HB Playwright’s Foundation where she also directed One Time, One Place, her adaptation of Eudora Welty short stories. She worked for five years as a member of the development staff of Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre where she directed numerous new and experimental plays. Her award-winning production of Pennant Fever, for the Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre led to her first TV job, writing for Taxi, and to commissions by the Mark Taper Forum to create and direct two productions for their literary cabaret series. The first, Red Smith On Baseball, based on the famed sports writer’s journalism; and the second, Baby In The Icebox, adapted from short stories by James M. Cain. She was invited to recreate the Cain project for the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J. Her autobiographical comedy, Jewish Roots, was produced at the Hudson Theatre and the co-written How’d It Go starring Megan Mullally was produced at the HBO/Warner Bros. Workspace, both in Los Angeles. Ellen is a member of the Writer’s Guild of America and the Dramatist Guild and has an MFA from the American Film Institute. Her consulting company, Sandler Ink, provides script development and career coaching, as well as workshops at universities and writer’s conferences both in the U.S. and abroad. She teaches television writing at USC School of Cinematic Arts and is the author of The TV Writer’s Workbook, A Creative Approach to Television Scripts, published by Bantam/Dell, Spring 2007.