Cheri Steinkellner, MA, M.Ed., MFA (Hon) has earned four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes the People’s Choice, BAFTA, Writers Guild, Parents Choice, and TV Land Legend Award for writing and producing television’s number-one comedy, Cheers (34 million viewers weekly), as well as the popular Disney animated series and musical feature film, Teacher’s Pet. 

In 2011, Ms. Steinkellner was awarded a Tony and was the Olivier-nominee (2010) for Sister Act - The Musical (with husband Bill Steinkellner, Alan Menken, and Glenn Slater). She also conceived and wrote the libretto and new lyrics for the Indy-award-winning, Ovation-nominated Hello! My Baby (licensed across the US with Music Theatre International), as well as the books for the musicals Princess, Mosaic, and JailBirds on Broadway, and the plays Tonight in Dreamland (with thought-leader Dr. Jean Houston) and Prima Materia. 

Other TV writing and production includes The Jeffersons, The Facts of Life, Family Ties, Who’s the Boss, Bob (Newhart), and Hope and Gloria. Other stage innovations include the Drama-Logue award-winning Our Place (Los Angeles Olympics Arts Festival, with Bill Steinkellner), and InstaPlay - L.A.’s first and longest-running full-length improvised musical, from 1982-present. 

Ms. Steinkellner is the founding mother of Santa Barbara’s Upstage Left Youth Theatre Program, where she directed the first licensed gender-neutral, color-blind production of 1776 (International Thespian Festival main stage production), and the Indy-award-winning productions of Our Town, Rent, A Chorus Line, and Hip-Hop Lyistrata. 

Currently, Ms. Steinkellner is writing the romantic-comedy studio feature Come Sail Away, and adapting her musical Hello! My Baby and the play Prima Materia for independent production. Ms. Steinkellner is a lecturer at Stanford University and at UCSB, where she was the first faculty recipient of the Film and Media Studies Inspiration Award (2016), and she lectures worldwide on writing and creativity.

Ms. Steinkellner received an MA in engaged humanities and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, an M.Ed. in leadership and social transformation from Meridian University, and an honorary MFA from New York Film Academy. 

Ms. Steinkellner and her husband, Bill, live in beautiful Santa Barbara, where they raised their three favorite writers/artists/muses, Kit, Teddy and Emma.

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