Lisa Sonne is an award-winning writer, author, innovator, producer, director, explorer, and photographer. She has written for an Oscar-winning documentary and an Emmy-winning televisions series. Her work has appeared in Time-Life and National Geographic publications, as cover stories for in-flight and college alumni magazines, and in the popular press from A (AAA magazines) to H (History magazine) to W (Wired.com) and Y (Yachting).
She has helped develop and produce/write for many television series on diverse topics including THE CREATIVE SPIRIT, 500 NATIONS, YOUR MIND AND BODY, FACES OF CULTURE, and THE SHAPE OF LIFE, as well as for individual shows ranging from ALASKA FISHERMEN to THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES for Bill Moyer’s Peabody winning series, IMAGE & REALITY IN AMERICA.
Her quests have taken her to all seven continents and in the major seas and oceans – from weightlessness with astronauts for LIFE magazine, to plunging into ocean depths for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC television in a pioneering winged submersible as the first woman to "fly underwater" – from crawling through caves in Mexico seeking "extremophile" life, to videotaping manta rays while
scuba diving -- from photographing tribal villages in Papua New Guinea, to directing TV from a helicopter flying beneath the peaks of the giant surf in Maui.
Sonne worked in Hollywood (on the first TERMINATOR movie, among others), company-managed Broadway shows, and produced concerts and historic Sheffield Lab records in Moscow that made the Billboard charts. She even headed an international co-production musical special hosted by Gregory Peck that was sent to outer space.
As an innovator, she co-founded the nonprofit Charity Checks, which pioneered a new kind of philanthropy & gift-giving; co-founded Charitable Literacy programs in schools; co-founded Possibilitators.com; and helped initiate and launch Space.com (VP of Education) and the video history project of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
Her photographs have appeared in magazines, books, posters, television shows, and CD covers. She is an award-winning travel writer and now publishes www.WorldTouristBureau.com.
She is a member of the Explorers Club, the literary Dutch Treat Club, the Independent Documentary Association, and Women-in-Film. She received the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship and earned a Masters from Stanford University.
Her science essay, “A Stardust Journey,” was written for the premium 40th anniversary Random House edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s WRINKLE IN TIME. Sonne's new book, "EVERYTHING 101," is available in Barnes and Noble stores this summer (and as an e-book for the Nook) with some useful information and eccentric, quirky trivia on Literature, History, Philosophy, Social Studies, Religion, Psychology, Math, Science, and the Arts.
Sonne lists her marital status as “happy.” She and her husband, Victor Dorff, renewed their wedding vows (again) in Antarctica in 2011.
You can reach Lisa at Everything101@Sonne.org.