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Jill Gurr, Founder and Executive Director

Create Now! Founder & Executive Director Jill Gurr grew up on Long Island in New York with two terrific parents, Rusty and Larry Gurr.  She earned a Bachelors degree in Broadcasting and Film from Boston University, where she volunteered as a disc-jockey on the radio station.

After graduating from Boston University, Jill was the Public Access TV Coordinator for Theta Cable (now Time-Warner Cable) in Santa Monica.  She produced and directed hundreds of programs, and also worked as an assistant to producers at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios and several agencies in Los Angeles.  Jill then held the position of Assistant to the Vice-President of Creative Affairs at Paramount Studios, where she was also responsible for covering scripts as a story analyst.  She has lived and traveled extensively around the world and is fluent in Spanish, French and Italian.

For 18 years, Jill worked as a Script Supervisor on award-winning feature, television and commercial productions on locations all over the world, with famous actors and directors (credits available at www.imdb.com).  As a Screenwriter, two of her scripts were produced: "Rigged," adapted from a novel by James Hadley Chase and starring George Kennedy, distribution by Kodiak Films and "Socrates," a PBS pilot for "The Immortals" series starring Ed Asner.  In addition, Jill wrote dialogue on "Yellow Hair and the Pecos Kid" for Crown Pictures.  Several of her original screenplays were optioned.

Having been given so many wonderful opportunities through her parents, Jill felt compelled to give back to youth who weren't as lucky.  Additionally, not having any children of her own and wanting to nurture, she knew that there were millions of troubled kids who could use help. 

As a writer, she had an idea for a screenplay about two rival gang members at the same detention camp.  She tried for months to set up a screenplay workshop at different detention camps, to no avail.  After the L.A. riots, Jill realized that there was an even greater need.  She was finally able to mentor a group of teenage boys that were incarcerated for a variety of crimes at Optimist Youth Homes in Eagle Rock.

After several months of developing this script with up to 30 youth, not only did she option the completed screenplay to producers, but several boys learned how to read and write, while others wanted to go back to school or attend college.  A tough gang leader even had tattoos removed.  Based on this success, Jill initiated a second screenwriting workshop at a coed detention facility and got the same results.

Due to the positive responses of these youth and the amazing transformations they went through, Jill was inspired to develop Create Now! as a nonprofit organization in 1996.  Since then, she and Create Now! have been impacting the lives of more than 11,000 high-risk and at-risk children for over eleven years.

Jill would also like to give special credit to the late writer/producer Leslie Stevens, a professor of Advanced Screenwriting at the Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies at the American Film Institute.  Mr. Stevens donated crucial seed money in 1996 so that Create Now! could become a reality.  Mr. Stevens was the creator of "The Outer Limits," writer of "The Return to the Blue Lagoon" and the Executive Producer of "McCloud" and "Battlestar Galactica."