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LINDA ELLERBEE
AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST/TELEVISION PRODUCER
Linda Ellerbee is an outspoken journalist, award-winning television producer, best-selling author, a breast cancer survivor, a mom, a grandmother and one of the most sought-after speakers in America.
Ellerbee began her career at CBS, and then moved to NBC News where, after years covering national politics, she pioneered the late-night news program NBC News Overnight, which she wrote and anchored. Overnight was cited by the duPont Columbia Awards as "the best written and most intelligent news program ever." In 1986, Ellerbee moved to ABC News to anchor and write Our World, a weekly primetime historical series. Her work on Our World won her an Emmy.
In 1987, Ellerbee and Rolfe Tessem, her partner, quit network news to start Lucky Duck Productions, first producing documentaries for PBS. In 1991, Lucky Duck began producing Nick News for Nickelodeon with Ellerbee writing and hosting. Seventeen years later, Nick News is watched by more children than watch all other television news shows put together—and has earned honors traditionally associated with adult programming. Known for the respectful and direct way it speaks to children about the important issues of our time, Nick News has collected three Peabody Awards (including one personal Peabody given to Ellerbee for her coverage of the Clinton investigation), a duPont Columbia Award and five Emmys.
These days, Ellerbee and her work can be seen all over the television universe. Lucky Duck has and continues to produce primetime specials for ABC, CBS, HBO, PBS, Lifetime, MTV, Logo, A&E, MSNBC, SOAPnet, Trio, Animal Planet and TV Land, among others. Ellerbee was honored with an Emmy for her series, When I Was a Girl, which aired on WE: Women’s Entertainment network.
Ellerbee’s first foray into books for kids, an eight-part fiction series entitled Get Real, published in 2000, won her raves among middle school readers. Both of Ellerbee’s previous adult books—And So It Goes, a humorous look at television news, and Move On, stories about being a working single mother, a child of the ‘60s and a woman trying to find some balance in her life—have been national best sellers. Ellerbee’s newest book, also a best seller, Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table, is a humorous account of her love of travel, talking to (and eating with) strangers, and, according to Ellerbee, “oh, just making trouble in general.”
As a breast cancer survivor, Ellerbee travels thousands of miles each year giving inspirational speeches to others. She is as direct with women as she is with kids; they understand that she understands their lives.
Although Ellerbee has won all of television's highest honors, she says it’s her two children who’ve brought her the richest rewards. Ellerbee spends her personal time in New York City and Massachusetts with Rolfe, her partner in work and life and their dogs, Daisy and Dolly.
Michael F. Roizen, MD,
Bestselling Author/Co-founder & Chairman of RealAge, Inc.
Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is the creator of RealAge, Inc., a consumer-health media company and provider of personalized health information and management tools that motivate health-conscious people to look, feel, and “live life to the youngest.” RealAge has been featured on national radio and television programs including 20/20, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Its interactive website, www.RealAge.com, addresses health and wellness issues, and the RealAge “Tip of the Day” is subscribed to by over 1.9 million people in the US.
The author of the #1 New York Times bestselling first edition of RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be?, Dr. Roizen is the coauthor, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, of the #1 New York Times bestseller You: The Owner's Manual. Highly regarded, RealAge was awarded the Books for a Better Life Awards' Best Wellness Book of 1999 and has been translated into 22 languages, and achieved #1 status in four other countries.
Dr. Roizen's second book, written with John La Puma, MD, The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat also became a New York Times bestseller. He has published a third book, Cooking The RealAge Way with Dr. La Puma, and his fourth book is The RealAge Makeover.His most recent bestseller with Dr. Oz is You: The Smart Patient.
As one of the nation’s top physicians, he is chair of the Division of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, and Comprehensive Pain Management at the Cleveland Clinic. Past chair of a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee, he has been an editor or associate editor for six medical journals; has published more than 155 peer-reviewed scientific papers; 100 textbook chapters; 30 editorials; and four medical books (one a ‘medical’ bestseller, translated into 13 languages). He has also been issued 12 US patents and several foreign patents.
After nine years on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco, he started and was medical director of the Chicago Program for Executive Health. He also chaired the top 10 rated department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago. He then became Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice-President for Biomedical Sciences at SUNY Upstate University. He is now CEO of The Biotechnology Research Corporation of Central New York.
Dr Roizen has given over 1000 lectures on medical topics to professional medical groups, and has been recognized with over 20 named professional lectureships. Dr Roizen has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show (over 10 times with several additional repeats), The Today Show (over ten times), 20/20, CBN, CNN, CBS, Good-Morning America, Montel, and PBS. He has been featured in all the major magazines including Fortune, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, Men’s Health, and Prevention.
Dr. Roizen continues to practice both anesthesiology and internal medicine, and uses the RealAge metric to motivate his patients. Since 1989, he has been continually listed in the Best Doctors in America reference. He has personally delivered medical care to eight Nobel Prize winners, 340 ex-smokers (whom he has helped to stop smoking), over 100 Fortune 500 CEO’s or CFO’s, as well as ordinary folks.
Dr. Roizen is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Williams College and Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the University of California, San Francisco, Medical School. He performed his residency in internal medicine at Harvard's Beth Israel Hospital and completed a tour of duty in the Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health in the laboratory of Irv Kopin and Nobel Prize winner Julius Axelrod.