Jill Gurr has personally mentored more than fifty at-risk and high-risk youth. Through Create Now, the non-profit organization that she founded in 1996, Jill has matched and trained hundreds of volunteers how to mentor thousands of the most troubled children in the Los Angeles and Orlando regions.

She is a produced screenwriter, having adapted the book Hit and Run by James Hadley Chase into the screenplay Rigged, which stars George Kennedy. The film is distributed by Kodiak Films. Jill also wrote Socrates, a PBS pilot that stars Ed Asner. Several of her original scripts have been optioned by reputable producers.

Jill graduated with a B.S. degree in Broadcasting and Film from Boston University. She worked for 20 years all over the world as a Script Supervisor (continuity) on award-winning movies with famous actors and directors. She is fluent in Spanish, French and Italian.

She has been featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°, ABC-TV, Fox11 News, NBC-TV and KTLA in their “Heroes at Home” segment, as well as in the Los Angeles Times.

Jill was one of eight people in the country selected by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to be featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Tolerance, “Everyday Heroes.”

She was chosen as one of the first four Americans to ever participate in a multilateral Global Xchange program sponsored by the British Council and Volunteer Services Organization. In 2010, Jill spent six weeks in Durban, South Africa and Belfast, North Ireland with 26 other community leaders from six countries (Sierra Leone, Rwanda, South Africa, France, UK and US), sharing best practices in mentoring youth.

Jill has been giving acclaimed presentations to international arts leaders and diplomats through the International Visitors Council (IVCLA), an adjunct of the U.S. State Department. As a result, Create Now received the prestigious 2011 Community Resource Award from IVCLA.

She was selected as one of “100 Making a Difference” for the coffee table book by celebrity photographer John Russo and written by CNN Correspondent Elizabeth Chambers. This book will be published in December 2012.

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