Lisanne Sartor gained notoriety early in life for: 1) Calling her fourth-grade teacher a female chauvinist for not letting girls play kickball with boys (a clear outrage). 2) Giving impromptu sex-ed seminars to her fifth-grade cohorts using Judy Blum’s classic FOREVER as her textbook (how proud were Sartor’s parents? Surprisingly, not very). 3) Calling her eighth-grade teacher a bitch for unfairly penalizing a fellow student for talking when in fact, Sartor was the culprit. (The vice principal told Sartor that, while he shared her opinion of said teacher, Sartor would be wise to keep such future opinions to herself. She never quite learned that lesson.)

Though Sartor seemed destined for a life of activism and politics after graduating from Yale, she instead moved to Los Angeles and became a Directors Guild assistant director via the DGA Training Program (a girl’s gotta eat). This career path made sense considering the fact that Sartor’s New Jersey Italian family’s favorite adage is: “If you want to play with the big dogs, you can’t piss like a puppy.” Being an assistant director is a tough, physical, “big dog” job and Sartor was damn good at it. But after seven years, she had a bad back, nerve damage in her feet and a Biblical appreciation for caffeine. It was time to figure out what kind of dog she truly was. She quit ADing to write screenplays and has never looked back.

Sartor subsequently got a UCLA MFA in Screenwriting, had one of her original screenplays made into a Lifetime MOW, worked on projects with various production companies, and since 2006, has helped run CineStory, a screenwriting non-profit dedicated to developing emerging screenwriters through mentorship and writers retreats.

She’s also an award-winning director who got her start at the prestigious AFI Directing Workshop for Women. Her short films have screened all over the world at wonderful festivals like Telluride and Cannes. She most recently participated in the AFI/Fox Bridge Program for Directing. She’s in the financing/casting stage of her first feature and is prepping her sixth short. She doesn’t sleep much.

And she doesn’t piss like a puppy.