John Jacobsen is the Executive Director of TheFilmSchool, which he co-founded and is the host and director of the national PBS show, The Artist Toolbox, which has an estimated viewing audience of 30 million people. He directed the feature film, Around the Fire, which won Italy’s Giffoni Film Festival and was nominated for The Best Independent Filmmaker’s Award at SIFF, and has produced several features, including the Columbia/Tri-Star picture Nervous Ticks starring Bill Pullman and Peter Boyle. His other major production credits include the HBO movie of the week, Danger of Love, John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pick Up with Roy Scheider and Ann Margaret, and The Assassin with Charles Bronson. Films he directed/produced, including the recent well-received short, Arthur, and newly released Spinning, have played at festivals around the world and won numerous awards including Best of Fest, Best Fiction Film at Action/Cut, Best Fantasy Short at MIFFF, Excellence in Short Film at Accolade, and gold, silver, and bronze awards at other festivals. He directed over thirty stage plays regionally and in New York, worked on Broadway under the legendary director, Hal Prince, directed and produced the Tribute to Katherine Dunham on CBS’s Emmy Award-winning Kennedy Center Honors, was a casting director with the great Ronnie Yeskel, and worked with the Academy Award-winning documentary maker, Charles Guggenheim. He managed the Motion Picture and Television Department at UCLA Extension, had an extensive career directing commercials, has sold numerous screenplays and was a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles. He has been involved in the film, theatre and television industries for over 30 years and teaches master classes in acting, directing and writing all around the country.