Liz Manne is a strategist. Through her consulting agencies Story Strategy Group and Liz Manne Strategy, Liz helps media companies and nonprofits develop aspirational missions and deliver on them.

Liz Manne is a creative producer. She’s made movies, trailers, posters, political ads, and some unusually groovy annual reports and research studies.

Liz believes culture is the object of change and the agent of change. Among her contributions to the still-growing field of narrative and cultural strategy are the Health Equity Narrative Project, which developed content and audience strategies to help dismantle structural racism in healthcare systems; Story at Scale, a narrative research project to advance gender justice; #PopJustice: Social Justice and the Promise of Pop Culture Strategies, a comprehensive study to introduce social justice philanthropy to the power of pop culture; and Making Waves: A Guide to Cultural Strategy, the seminal educational handbook from The Culture Group, a pop-up think tank of artists and activists.

Liz thinks name dropping is tacky, but sometimes does it anyway. She began her entertainment career as a stagehand with the legendary San Francisco rock and roll concert promoter Bill Graham, who taught her an enduring respect for the audience. From Robert Redford, who she worked with in the early days of SundanceTV, she learned that politics and entertainment are not only compatible, they’re basically the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of endeavors. From her mother, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, Liz learned how to make a bed. And from Barack Obama, she learned the same thing everyone else did: hope springs eternal, so you might as well get out of that bed and just keep trying.

Liz is indebted to young colleagues for introducing her to the validating concept of the “portfolio” career. Liz’s consulting work has included an eclectic mix of CEO coaching, strategic planning, and brand strategy. Clients have included SFFILM, San Francisco’s preeminent film culture institute; Cinetic Marketing, the powerhouse prestige film PR firm; Cinereach, an award-winning media incubator; ReFrame, a leading social justice narrative power-builder; HBO Films, back when that really, truly meant something; and the one and only TIFF.

Liz is a survivor of a career as a film and television executive, and has the NDAs to prove it. As executive vice president and co-founder of Fine Line Features and senior advisor to HBO Films, Liz helped shepherd more than 100 critically acclaimed and award-winning films to market, including the (GOAT) documentary Hoop Dreams, Maria Full of Grace, Elephant, My Own Private Idaho, Shine and The Player. At SundanceTV, long before streaming, she helped pioneer the programming of queer, Latinx, Black, and women filmmakers for television audiences. (Complete Filmography)

Liz’s last job-job was executive director of the humanitarian NGO FilmAid International, where she launched a rapid response communications operation in the world’s largest refugee camp during the 2011 Somalia famine crisis, and brought public information programming via inflatable screens to internally displaced person in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. She learned some things.

Liz once sat behind Bob Hope at the Oscars. She has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1997 and serves as a member of the Academy’s marketing and PR branch executive committee. She is a member of the advisory boards of Harmony Labs and the Narrative Initiative and serves on the steering committee of The Creative Resistance, whose Lulu Land video helped flip the New York State Senate Blue in 2018. 

Liz, unironically, considers herself a patriot. She was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. She tendered her resignation January 20, 2017. 

Liz does not cook. She holds a BA in Dramatic Art from University of California, Berkeley (Go Bears) and an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. (She got an MBA so people would stop asking her how fast she typed during job interviews in the 1980s, which was essentially the 1950s for all the opportunities afforded to women.) Liz lives in New York City with the producer and director Fred Berner. The Clash remains her favorite band, the 49ers her football team.