Shawn Tolleson

Career Coach Shawn Tolleson and her company Strategy Coaching™ have worked with thousands of individuals in the entertainment industry in causing career breakthroughs that take them to the next level. She has coached actors from being on the outside of the industry, looking for a “break,” to being working professionals who book TV, film and commercials regularly and make their living as an actor. She has coached writers to securing TV staff writing jobs, directors to attaching star actors to their projects, and producers to securing financing for their projects. She has coached cinematographers, make-up artistis, and DPs to booking their dreams jobs, and to breaking through to a whole new level of work—quality, consistency and prestige. She regularly speaks to packed auditoriums at Women In Film, AFTRA, SAG, Scriptwriter’s Network, Alameda Writer’s Group, Hair and Make-up Artist Network, and more.

Shawn comes to career coaching as an accomplished writer, director and producer. She recently directed Martin Sheen in her proof-of-concept short for her feature Shakespeare’s Henry IV, which she will direct with Sheen and Angela Bassett. She is putting together her feature film Saturn Returns to shoot June 2012. She wrote the screenplay for Saturn Returns which recently won Best Screenplay at the Mountain Film Festival. She sold a romantic comedy pitch to Warner Bros, and wrote and directed for the first webseries created parallel to a network television show, FOX’s The Visitor. She directed the world premiere of the Sam Shepard play, It Wasn’t Proust, and worked for 8 years producing and production managing dozens of commercials, music videos and high fashion stills shoots. Projects include the Rolling Stones video Rain Fall Down, Coke and BMW commercials, and Vogue and W Magazine cover shoots with Jennifer Aniston and Gwen Stefani. She started her career as an actor and is classically trained as both an actor and theatre director with a B.F.A. from University of North Carolina School of the Arts.