Draft:Lindsay Jewett Sturman

Lindsay Jewett Sturman is an American tv writer who has written for over a dozen tv series and served as showrunner for When Calls the Heart (2023-2024), Supergirl (2019-2021) and Teen Wolf (2016-2017). She is also known as a change-maker who works tirelessly to improve the environment and the lives of people in Los Angeles. Since 2018, she has led Livable Communities Initiative, an advocacy and design framework that is transforming Los Angeles’ car-dependent landscape into walkable/bikeable 15 minute cities near job centers and efficient public transportation. She led the founding of 3 popular charter schools (Larchmont Charter, Valley Charter, City Charter) and inspired a movement of parent-founded schools across Los Angeles.

Early life

Born in New York City to Nancy (Tucky) Robertson and Jonathan Jewett, Lindsay is the second of three children. She is the granddaughter of the late Charles Wood Jewett, who was Connecticut's Lieutenant Governor from 1955 to 1959 and a former Republican majority leader of Connecticut’s state Senate. She attended Milton Academy, then graduated Harvard University with a degree in English. After completing her MFA at Columbia University’s Film School, she moved to Los Angeles and began working as an editor and screenwriter.

Writing career

Sturman began her writing career on the staff of hour-long dramatic tv series including Joan of Arcadia, Odyssey 5, and Family Law. She was both a writer and producer on the tv series Battle Creek, Cult, Rizzoli & Isles, NCIS: Los Angeles, Harper’s Island and Close to Home.

After serving as a consulting producer on Teen Wolf, she became executive producer and show runner (2016-17). She greatly appreciated that, “the fans get how powerful the show is. They get that the show is truly complex, and that it is doing many things at once,” and “I think the fans validate that shows do not have to be one simple thing, one “kind” of show, but can be layered and complex.”

Sturman became the show runner of When Calls the Heart, , Hallmark's longest running tv series, in 2022. Sturman has stated about the author of the book on which the series based: “I have been lucky enough to meet Janette Oke, and I think her goodness permeates everything we do, and inspires us to tell kind stories.”

Activism

From education to elections, affordable housing to climate change, Lindsay Sturman has a track record of impactful activism. She sits on the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance's Transportation Committee, the Movement Voter Project LA Steering Committee, LA Forward's Transportation Justice Committee, and the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council Transportation Committee. She is the co-host of the podcast "Bike Talk," where her focus is on safe bike infrastructure and Dutch design and engineering.

Affordable Housing, Climate Change, and Biking

Sturman is the co-founder of the Livable Communities Initiative (LCI), a proposal to address the affordable housing crisis and climate change. Sturman brought together experts in architecture, mobility, advocacy, construction, and urban planning in 2021 to research and engage stakeholders. With policy director Eduardo Mendoza, award-winning architect and author Gerhardt Mayer , community organizer and advocate Jennifer Levin, John Claflin and many experts and volunteers, LCI drafted a comprehensive plan to transform Los Angeles from a sprawling, congested landscape to a public-transit-connected web of 15-minute neighborhoods.

Following the LCI design, underdeveloped commercial corridors located near jobs and public transit can be converted into attractive, pedestrian-friendly streets lined with 3-5 story residential-over-retail buildings. People can then thrive without cars in high-quality, yet affordable, homes, in beautiful, zero-carbon neighborhoods throughout LA.

Charter Schools

In 2003, Sturman invited concerned parents from across her neighborhood in Los Angeles to a backyard meeting. Their local elementary school was overcrowded and had been designated ‘Program Improvement' (a now-defunct designation for schools that failed to meet yearly student performance goals for two consecutive years) for 5+ years.

But she had a plan. She introduced parents to the charter school option and explained educational concepts like constructivism, project-based learning, and balanced literacy. She had brought an educator on board to design the program and hire the founding faculty. And she was partnering with representatives from the larger community, which included Koreatown, Thai Town, Little Armenia, Hollywood, and East Los Angeles, to ensure a neighborhood school reflecting the diversity of Los Angeles.

Sturman organized 100 ‘founding families’ in volunteering their time, in return for a guaranteed admission for their children. While educator Dvora Inwood (the only non-parent volunteer) wrote the charter petition in collaboration with educational researchers and teachers, the ‘founding parents’ identified and prepared the school site, created the legal framework for the nonprofit organization, developed community relationships to attract a diverse student body, and raised funds. Larchmont’s petition was approved and the school opened in the fall of 2005. Achieving its goals of excellence, diversity, and community, Larchmont attracted students from a broad range of socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, and linguistic backgrounds. Teachers were also attracted to the school due to its tenets of empowerment and support for educators. Several founding faculty members became administrators after years of teaching at the school.

Parent interest in the school soared and a petition for a ‘sister’ elementary school (LCW, Larchmont Charter West Hollywood) was written, approved, and opened in 2008. These schools eventually merged and occupied 4 campuses, covering grades K-12

Sturman later guided parent groups (with Inwood as ‘Founding Educator’) and opened similar educational programs: Valley Charter Elementary School (2009), Valley Charter Middle School (2010), City Middle School (2011), City Language Immersion Charter School (2012).

She was awarded the Hart Vision California Charter School Volunteer of the Year Award in 2009.