Bio

Jeffrey Stepakoff was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an accomplished writer-producer and an experienced academic, with a thirty-three year entertainment industry career that includes sweeping internationally-recognized credits, leadership roles in content creation and production management, and a track record of collaboration, innovation, and success in virtually all forms of commercial media.

After graduating from Woodward Academy, earning a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and then completing his Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting at Carnegie Mellon University, School of Drama, Stepakoff moved to Hollywood and began writing and producing film, television and digital entertainment.

He has “written by” or “story by” credits on thirty-seven television episodes, has written for fifteen different series, and has been a writer and/or writer-producer on eight primetime or first-run cable staffs, credited on more than two hundred episodes of popular television. The TV credits for which he is most known include the Emmy-winning The Wonder Years, Sisters, Wild Card, Hyperion Bay, The Magic School, C16:FBI, Robin's Hoods, Land's End, Flipper, Sons & Daughters, Major Dad, The Yakov Smirnoff Show, Beauty & the Beast, Have Faith, Simon & Simon, and break-out hit Dawson's Creek, where he was Co-Executive Producer. Until July 2015, he worked as the Co-Executive Producer of Chasing Life for ABC Family.

Stepakoff has also created and developed pilots for many of the major studios and networks, including 20th Century, Paramount, MTM, Fox and ABC, and a variety of production companies and producers, such as Alloy Entertainment (Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries), Michael Pillar (Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine), and David Milch (Deadwood, NYPD Blue).

Stepakoff has worked for numerous entertainment companies in the research and digital arts space, such as SimEx-Iwerks Entertainment, HarperCollins Interactive, Citicorp Transactional Technology, Digital Pictures, Inscape (HBO/Time Warner), and Universal Studios. He wrote the popular videogames Quarterback Attack with Mike Ditka. Creating a new storytelling model as one of the first “webisodic” shows, and the initial original content project for the digital media division of Paramount Studios, he developed and wrote Perspectives, an interactive drama series for the internet.

He has also developed and written major motion pictures, including Disney’s Brother Bear, Tarzan, for which Phil Collin’s won an Academy Award, and EM Entertainment’s Lapitch, Croatia’s selection for the 1998 Academy Awards.

There are over a million copies of Stepakoff’s novels in print in twenty languages, as well as in editions for Reader’s Digest, France Loisirs, and all the major domestic book clubs, including The Literary Guild, Doubleday, and The Book-of-the-Month Club.

On February 10, 2011, Governor Nathan Deal and the Georgia General Assembly honored Stepakoff and his work with privileged resolutions (Bills HR261 and SR 130) made in both houses of the legislature.

Since 2006, Stepakoff has held a professorship in Film and Television Writing at Kennesaw State University. He has also taught at Carnegie Mellon, UNC- Chapel Hill, Clemson, Notre Dame, CCNY, and Emory.

Stepakoff developed, launched, and currently directs the Georgia Film Academy, the state’s film and entertainment arts school based at the Board of Regents, that has partnerships with 22 state universities and technical colleges. He is a regular speaker for media, business organizations, and large groups on the state’s entertainment industry, education and workforce, and the emerging creative economy.

Stepakoff is a member of a wide variety of professional, civic, and leadership organizations, including: Rotary Club of Atlanta, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Writers Guild of America, Writers Guild of Canada, Screen Actors Guild, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 839 (Animation Guild), Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Georgia Writers Association, Fulton County Workforce Development Board, Georgia Screen Entertainment Coalition.

Stepakoff has three children and lives in Midtown Atlanta. Along with his writing and creative work, he regularly spends time walking in Piedmont Park, attending events at the Woodruff Arts Center and around town, and enjoying all the great things Georgia has to offer. He tries to get in at least an hour of film/TV viewing every day.