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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.
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