Ellen Snortland is a lawyer, author, filmmaker, and writing teacher. As a public intellectual regarding gender justice, Ellen has been a speaker, U.N. Press Corps credentialed journalist and delegate for major United Nations World Conferences: the Women’s conference in Beijing and Conference Against Racism in South Africa, and the Commission on the Status of Women in New York City.
Featured on Dateline NBC, Ellen’s breakout book is “Beauty Bites Beast,” which is also the title of her award-winning documentary which has screened all over the world. Ellen lives in California with her husband Ken and their three naughty dogs.
Author, Activist and Women's Self Defense Advocate
http://beautybitesbeast.com
Activist
Making a Difference
Ms. Snortland has been a broadcast and print journalist specializing in human rights issues, including the movement to achieve gender balance in institutions, women in history, reducing violence against women, and childhood and adult sexual harassment.
Ellen particularly advocates nipping sexual harassment in the bud where it starts, in the home and on the playground, by empowering girls and women to speak up at the moment. As a self-defense advocate, Ellen writes about and teaches both women and kids physical self-protection skills. She completed the IMPACT empowerment-based Self-Defense Instructor Training, then joined the IMPACT Personal Safety board in its newly formed 501(c)(3) rebirth as a non-profit organization.
She attended the U.N.A. Non-Governmental Organizations Forum and the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 as both a delegate and a journalist. She also covered the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in August 2001. She received a grant from the Better World Campaign to cover the U.N.’s 47th Commission on the Status of Women and has attended the U.N. C.S.W. for many years. Ms. Snortland was a part-time faculty member in the Communication Studies Department at California State University, Los Angeles.
Ellen has been inspired by and worked alongside many of the great activists of our time, Gloria Steinem, Dolores Huerta and Jesse Jackson to name a few. Recognized as a leader in her community, Ms. Snortland was declared a “Woman of the Year” by Congressman Adam Schiff in 2012.
Ellen's Body of Work
Ellen Snortland has the unique ability to speak and write with authority on subjects ranging from knitting and cooking, to S.W.A.T. team methods of close-quarter hand-to-hand combat to the opportunities and obstacles of the professional American woman. Her perspective provides a much needed bridge of understanding between the home, university and the office in a context of feminist theory.
Beauty Bites Beast
True to her Renaissance Woman nature, she is the author of “Beauty Bites Beast: The Missing Conversation About Ending Violence,” which was featured on Dateline NBC and is now in its 3rd edition. This ground-breaking book has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and Korean.
Beauty Bites Beast’s mission is to "normalize" empowerment self-defense as a human need and right; to inspire those on the fence to see that the drive to protect oneself is not a gendered attribute. We want to make empowerment self-defense accessible, portable and affordable to the populations most at risk: women, kids, minorities and LGBT communities.
Beauty Bites Beast is now also an award-winning feature-length documentary film.
Ellen co-authored a second book with IMPACT Personal Safety founder Lisa Gaeta called “The Safety Godmothers.” Snortland’s third book, “Biting the Hands That Squeeze Us,” is in the editing phase.
The Safety Godmothers
Every day, the concerns you have about your personal safety and that of your loved ones increases with each news story about rape on campus, domestic violence, or someone who just “loses it.” What can you do? PREPARE FOR IT, just like you prepare for earthquakes, fires and other natural disasters. You need a plan and some skills… and THE SAFETY GODMOTHERS are here to show you the way!
Tailored products upon request
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et nam dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco nam laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in adec voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et nam dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco nam laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in adec voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et nam dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco nam laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in adec voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Ellen Snortland will be presenting at the iLumn8 Summit: Imagining in Action