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Born
and raised in Philadelphia, Ina and her late brother Conrad spent half their
“kidhood” living in Los Angeles, after their parents’ divorce.
Bi-coastal living wasn’t half bad, they decided; Burma Shave signs on Route
66 alone were a treat. At age 21, Ina graduated from the University of
Pennsylvania (an anthropology major), and then ran away from both sets of
parents to attend graduate school in New Orleans, at Tulane. She married in
the French Quarter, and soon moved to Manhattan with husband Barry, a
lawyer, and Rapscallion P. Cat. At J. Walter Thompson in New York
City, Ina became a qualitative researcher, doing scads of focus groups.
Later Ina became an independent strategic planning consultant and futurist
to companies including CBS, Charles Schwab, Citicorp, Scott Paper, VISA,
SEARS, IBM and non-profits such as The Rockefeller Foundation. She created
ethnographic study processes to augment one-way mirror information, and had
lots of fun working with Fisher-Price and Dunkin' Donuts, and on
projects like Oreos Double Stuff. (The question of whether to make a
new version with an extra cookie vs. more filling turned out to be a
no-brainer. When kids pantomimed eating an Oreo, they threw the cookies
under the table for the dog, after licking off all the icing. Sound
familiar?)
In the mid-eighties, Ina had several epiphanies. Divorced for several
years, she moved with daughter Nicole, two cats and Handsome, The World’s
Best Dog, back to California. In Carmel, she turned her attention full time
to writing. But writing can be lonely, and she missed working with groups
of people. Thus began her UN-Workshops - a series of interactive
seminars based on Ina’s work and life experience. Comic Release and
Idea Magic are two of her most popular offerings; they help 2-legged
creatures de-stress, and add humor, creativity and harmony to their
professional and personal lives. (More about the UN-Workshops coming
soon to this site. Meantime, you can use our
contact information if you would
like to know more.)
Since returning to the West Coast, Ina has written, edited and contributed
to a number of books, journals and newsletters, and has performed a variety
of roles in creating audio and video programs. Some examples of books she
wrote or contributed to, in addition to her first published book
Pawprints, which became an Amazon.com best seller, include: How
to Write Your Memoirs...Fun Prompts to Make Writing...and Reading...Your
Life Stories a Pleasure; Diving Boards: Jump-Starts for Stories
– OR – If You See a Man Alone on the Beach, It Means His Wife is Upstairs
Throwing up in the Room; The Bless Your Heart Cookbook; The Hardest
Challenge – Surviving the Death of a Spouse. Her work with seniors
has produced two volumes of Stories From The Heart, v. 2 a best
seller on Amazon.com, and a third was published spring 2007. Other books are in various
states of development, as are projects for television and film. Her
writing work has led to the creation of a literacy program,
Pawprints Literacy
Plus, whose mission is to combine building literacy skills
with kindness to animals, for at-risk youth and seniors.
She has recently extended writing workshops and Spoken Word performance work
to apply to adults of all ages. And after inheriting the imprint Pawpress,
began producing first sponsored books, and is now expanding the subsidy
book
publishing side of the catalog as well, in answer to author requests.
In other media,
Ina was associate producer on the Jaco Pastorius NPR special hosted by
Branford Marsalis, script doctor for a Kansas City Jazz live TV special
co-hosted by Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, and photo archivist for a
live and videotaped series on Ethnic Arts, featuring the Chuck Davis Dance
Group and other artists, produced by the Foundation for Urban Cultural
Development, underwritten by the New York Department of Education. She has
been interviewed for print by The New York Times and other
press, and has appeared live and on tape on radio and television.
Included
in
Women of the Year in Who’s Who, Ina speaks a bit of French, loves to dance,
hike, ride horses, sail, laugh, cook and travel. She contributes to many
animal rights groups and has served on steering committees and boards of
such organizations such as the Jane Goodall Institute - Los Angeles. She’s proud of daughter
Nicole, who is a talented actress, avid traveler, newly practicing gourmet
cook, and a good person. Ina currently lives in Brentwood with her two cats
– Tamba and Pixelle – and their friends who drop in for dinner occasionally. She really misses
Sascha, Silverberry, Rapper, Sammy and Handsome, as you can tell from
Pawprints and
eulogies on this site.
Click
the shop below to enter or return to
InasPawprints.com Online Store, where gifts featuring Handsome and Rapper's
Lions of Clothes and other Goodies await you and your furry home companions!

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