Council

Sara David is a writer and editor who worked at Paramount+, Netflix, and VICE, where she was a member of the VICE Union bargaining and labor-management committees. She’s served on WGAE Council since 2021 as an Online Media Representative and then sector Vice-President, and has been an active member since 2017, establishing and serving on various committees including ones for industry-wide organizing, shop steward and union leadership training, and the OM and Podcast Workers Bill of Rights. Sara is currently a student at CUNY School of Law; you can follow her on Twitter/X at @SaraQDavid (external – opens in a new window).

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Sofia Alvarez is a playwright, screenwriter and director. Her directorial debut film, Along for the Ride, an adaptation of Sarah Dessen’s bestselling novel, for which she also wrote the screenplay, was released on Netflix in May 2022. She is best known for writing the screenplays for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and To All the Boys 2: P.S. I Still Love You based on Jenny Han’s novels of the same name. In 2018 she was named one of Variety Magazine’s ten screenwriters to watch. Her work in television includes the first two seasons of Man Seeking Woman (FXX) and the first season of Sirens(USA). She is a graduate of Bennington College and The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. She has taught screenwriting at NYU Tisch and playwriting at ESPA. She has served as a panelist for the Austin Film Festival and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Monica Lee Bellais is serving her fourth term on the WGAE Council. She holds a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications and is also a member of PGA, SAG-AFTRA, NATAS, BAFTA, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and Women in Film & Video in Washington, DC, where she serves on the Advisory Committee.

Larry J. Cohen is a writer, producer and New Jersey enthusiast. His credits include BERLIN STATION (MGM+), BORGIA (Netflix/Canal+) and SADDAM & ME (selected for the 2018 Blacklist). His work has been selected in festivals across the country including San Francisco International, Boston Independent and Palm Springs International. His producing credits include Peabody Award winning RadioLab’s “WORDS”. Most recently, he has been developing series for Apple TV+, Bad Robot and HBO.

Josh Gondelman is a comedy writer and standup comedian who recently worked as a writer and executive producer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. Prior to that, he spent five years at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, first as a web producer and then as a staff writer, where he earned two Peabody awards, four Emmy awards, and three WGA awards. Gondelman is also the author of the essay collection Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results and appears as a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.

Liz Hynes is a writer based in New York City. She currently writes for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and was previously the Writers’ Assistant at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Greg Iwinski is an Emmy-winning comedy writer and no-award-winning performer whose writing includes Last Week Tonight and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. He recently finished writing the first season of Game Theory With Bomani Jones on HBO, and can be found on Twitter@garyjackson.

Céline Robinson is a French-born, UK-bred television writer and producer (Law & Order: SVU, American Rust, Grendel…). She lives in New York City with her wife and three beautiful plants (Snake, ZZ, Monstera…). Prior to joining council, she was a dedicated strike captain, and active lobbyist to include WGA writers in the NY Film/TV Production Tax Credit. She’s honored to serve on this council, and deeply focused on incentivizing this industry to create jobs where we actually live. When not writing or Writers Guilding, she can be found enjoying sports, theatre, and soup of any kind (matzah ball, mulligatawny, shio ramen…). She wants to hear your concerns, and help you in all the ways that a strong union can and should.

Sasha Stewart is a writer, creator, and producer, most recently of the six-part Netflix historical docuseries, Amend: The Fight for America. As part of her work with the Guild, she is a member of the WGAE’s Committee for Inclusion & Equity, as well as the WGAE’s Scripted Audio Organizing Committee and Audio Alliance. Working across genres and mediums, she has written for Netflix, Comedy Central, Facebook Watch, iHeartRadio, and C-SPAN (Thank you, White House Correspondents’ Dinner). Alongside co-creator Keisha Zollar, she is a winner of the 2020 Yes, And… Laughter Lab for their comedic women’s health docuseries based on their shared experiences with the healthcare system. She also contributes to McSweeney’s and The New Yorker. She is currently in development on multiple scripted and unscripted projects, is in pre-production on another, and has she mentioned you look absolutely radiant today?

SUZANNE WEBER began her career as a writer by creating and performing the character, Anita Liberty, a performance poet who achieves notoriety when she devotes her entire career to humiliating her ex-boyfriend, Mitchell, in public. Under the Anita Liberty pseudonym, Weber wrote three books including How to Heal the Hurt by Hating and How to Stay Bitter Through the Happiest Times of Your Life. Her fourth book, To What Miserable Wretches Have I Been Born? (Revenge Poetry for Babies and Toddlers) was published under her own name. Weber has developed original comedy pilots for ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, Universal & Broadway Video. Weber was on staff for all three seasons of Disney Channel’s Andi Mack, and was a writer/producer on the sadly short-lived Lizzie McGuire reboot for Disney+. Weber lives in New York, continues to write, and is making all of her friends call her Councilperson Weber.

Caitlin Cruz is a journalist who specializes in coverage of abortion, reproductive healthcare, politics and gender. Currently, she’s a senior reporter at Jezebel. Previously, she worked at digital upstarts Snapchat, Fusion, Gizmodo Media Group, Bustle Digital Group as well as traditional newspapers, including The Seattle Times, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune and The Arizona Republic.

She is a proud member of the GMG Union, which represents Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kokatu, Lifehacker, and The Root. As a member of the bargaining committee, she helped organize the first open-ended strike in digital media history in February 2022.

Jessica Schulberg is a senior reporter at HuffPost, covering the criminal legal system. She is the recipient of a 2022 Deadline Club award and a 2023 Writers Guild Award. Her work has helped free people from prison and led to policy and legislative change. She volunteers with Empowerment Avenue, helping incarcerated journalists publish their work in mainstream outlets. She is a proud member of HuffPost Union, where she has helped negotiate two contracts and has served on contract enforcement committees since 2017.

Samantha Smylie (They/She) is a journalist covering education in Illinois for Chalkbeat Chicago, and they are based in Chicago. She has written for local news organizations in the city such as the Hyde Park Herald, South Side Weekly, the Chicago Reader, and City Bureau. They are currently a shop steward for the Civic News Guild which covers Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat. She was voted in as an Online Media council member in 2023. You can reach Samantha on Twitter/X at @sammie_smylie.

Some fun things you should know about me: I have a small goldendoodle named Cherry, I picked up crocheting and embroidery at the end of 2023, and I’m a total booknerd.

For more info on Justin go to: IMDb (external – opens in a new window) and/or LinkedIn (external – opens in a new window)

Gail Lee is writer/producer at CBS News who has been involved in Guild activities for many years. Her credits include 7 terms as WGAE Secretary/Treasurer as well as serving on the Finance, Awards, Real Estate and multiple WGA-CBS News Negotiating Committees. Gail was the recipient of the Richard B. Jablow Award for Devoted Service to the Guild. She has also won WGA, RTNDA and Peabody Awards for her work.