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Samantha Harris of DWTS and ET on Feeding America’s Hungry Children

Samantha Harris Works with Feeding America.Org to Help Stop Childhood Hunger in America

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMPgbMXDTpA]

We caught Samantha Harris, formally co-host of Dancing With The Stars and Entertainment Tonight, and recently on Stars Earn Strips, at the GBK Gifting Suites for the 2012 Oscars. Stars come out to support great charities and businesses that often support their own charities.

I really love this charity as past Los Angeles Coordinator of Feed333 which for 3 years running, was the nations #1 largest one day food giveaway, I am familiar with the hunger issue in America and it is not just about the homeless. We are talking about the working poor in this country. Below you will find statistics that should make us all a bit embarrassed.

What a great honor it was to get to interview such a well known interviewer. I did not ask her how I did, but I can tell you how cool Samantha was.

I left a little leader on this interview to show you what I mean. She was in a hurry and we had camera issues. She just dealt and came back when we fixed it.

She told me that she was not new to technical difficulties. Even though she has interviewed some of the most important or well known people of our time she made me feel so comfortable… Thanks Samantha. – JW

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Samantha HarrisSamantha Harris

A seasoned entertainment news journalist and two-time Emmy-nominated TV personality, Samantha Harris was recently seen co-hosting Stars Earn Strips  with General Wesley Clark four-star general as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander on NBC. She commentated the action for a plethora of celebrities as they competed on special forces missions. Samantha is also well known for her work on the world’s #1 entertainment news program, Entertainment Tonight, as correspondent.  In just her first months with the show, she covered the Cannes Film Festival, traveled to two film sets in Hawaii (for interviews with Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman), and also interviewed stars such as Jake Gyllenhaal, Russell Crowe, Sting, Cate Blanchett, Michael Douglas and more!

Samantha is best-known for her eight seasons co-hosting the live ABC hit Dancing With The Stars, which averaged more than 30 million viewers weekly and was the #2 most-watched show in the U.S. in each of those years.  In Season 2, she even kicked up her heals on the ballroom floor to perform a Jive routine with World Smooth Champion and DWTS professional dancer Jonathan Roberts.

Simultaneously with her time on DWTS, Samantha pulled double hosting duty as she passionately shared her opinion nightly as a panelist and correspondent on the entertainment news program CBS Television Distribution’s The Insider.

In her first year with the program, she covered President Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C.; surfed the North Coast of Oahu during an interview with 19-year-old surfing champion Bethany Hamilton – who lost her arm to a shark attack at age 13; interviewed Oprah in Chicago and Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan in LA, in the days following her father’s death; as well as interviewed Hollywood’s A-list on the red carpet at the Emmys, SAG Awards, Golden Globes and Oscars.

Additionally, Samantha made her Broadway debut in summer 2009 in New York City, singing and dancing for sold-out audiences playing the iconic role of “Roxie Hart” in the long-running musical CHICAGO.

Samantha has been seen on a myriad of TV shows, including: filling in for Meredith Vieira as a guest host for a week on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire; multiple times as a guest host on ABC’s The View; contributing as a special correspondent on ABC’s Good Morning America.

One of her greatest honors was hosting, alongside Regis Philbin, the live official red carpet pre-show for ABC’s 80th Annual Academy Awards: Road To the Red Carpet, which garnered nearly one billion viewers worldwide.

samantha harrisBeginning in January 2005 and continuing for four years, Harris was seen in over 130 countries in 600 million homes on E! Entertainment Television.  In addition to writing, producing and reporting daily for E! News, she co-hosted the network’s live award-show coverage for the Oscars, Golden Globes and Emmys.  Samantha has also found herself reporting from inside San Quentin Penitentiary as host for E!’s THS Investigates, a spin-off series from the producers of E! True Hollywood Story.

Prior to her work on The Insider and E!, Samantha served as the weekend co-host and full-time correspondent for the nationally syndicated entertainment news magazine Extra which she joined in 2003.  As a correspondent who sought out unique stories, Samantha took to the stage performing with Cirque du Soleil, sang a duet with Wayne Newton during his live show in Las Vegas, as well as dancing her way into the arms of the late beloved Patrick Swayze backstage, while he was starring in the LA tour-stop of Chicago.

Samantha’s other hosting credits include FOX’s The Next Joe Millionaire, AMC Access (a show produced by NBC’s Access Hollywood forthe AMC network).

Harris’ triple-threat talents were noticed within her first years living in Los Angeles.  Hot off the North American musical tour Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python (where Samantha’s comedic, vocal, and dance performance electrified audiences at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and other prestigious venues), CBS cast her as America’s sweetheart, “Dawn Wells aka Mary Ann”, in its made-for-TV movie Surviving Gilligan’s Island.  Samantha’s other acting credits include the multi-award winning Reefer Madness!: The New “Hit” Musical(original cast) as well as multiple feature films and television shows.

In addition to gracing the cover of Muscle & Fitness HERS magazine a record four times,Samantha has also been seen on the covers of a variety of other magazine including USA Today magazine, FIRST, Fit Parent.  She has been featured inmany magazines including SHAPE, People, Health, Self, and others.  As a fitness enthusiast, she loves dancing, cardio-sculpting, Bikram yoga but will also confess… she’s a dessert fanatic!

Samantha is actively involved in various charities. She is on the Entertainment Council of Feeding America and has actively supported the Revlon Run/Walk and What A Pair for cancer research, Operation Smile, P.S. Arts, the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America and others.

In 2009, Samantha was given the honor of making her Wall Street debut by ‘Ringing The Bell’ to open trading at the New York Stock Exchange in front of a television audience of more than 120 million.

Born and raised in Hopkins, MN by a rock concert promoter father and dancer mother – who together created and produced one of the country’s first Renaissance festivals, King Richard’s Faire– Samantha went on to graduate with honors from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, IL.  She currently resides in Los Angeles, CA, with her husband, Michael, and their two daughters, Josselyn and Hillary.

So now that Samantha is not with Dancing with The Stars and E! Entertainment, what is she up to? Samantha has teamed up with the charity Feeding America and its partner Nestle’s Juicy Juice as the spokesperson for this summer’s Fruit For All Project, which will donate 35 million pieces of fresh fruit to children and families in need.”

For more info and photos of Samantha Harris, go to www.samantha-harris.com

Feeding America

In many ways, America is the land of plenty. But for 1 in 6 people in the United States, hunger is a reality. Many people believe that the problems associated with hunger are confined to small pockets of society, certain areas of the country, or certain neighborhoods, but the reality is much different.

Right now, millions of Americans are struggling with hunger.  These are often hard-working adults, children and seniors who simply cannot make ends meet and are forced to go without food for several meals, or even days.

It’s time to educate ourselves about the causes of hunger in America.

Feeding America is the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. Through its network of more than 200 food banks, Feeding America provides assistance to more than 25 million low-income people facing hunger in the United States each year.

Take the Hunger Quiz

Hunger & Poverty Statistics

Although related, food insecurity and poverty are not the same.  Unemployment rather than poverty is a stronger predictor of food insecurity.

Poverty [1]

  • In 2009, 43.6 million people (14.3 percent) were in poverty.
  • In 2009, 8.8 million (11.1% percent) families were in poverty.
  • In 2009, 24.7 million (12.9 percent) of people ages 18-64 were in poverty.
  • In 2009, 15.5 million (20.7 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
  • In 2009, 3.4 million (8.9 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.

Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security[2]

  • In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.
  • In 2010, 14.5 percent of households (17.2 million households) were food insecure.
  • In 2010, 5.4 percent of households (6.4 million households) experienced very low food security.
  • In 2010, households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.2 percent compared to 11.7 percent.
  • In 2010, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (20.2 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (35.1 percent) or single men (25.4 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (25.1 percent) and Hispanic households (26.2 percent).
  • In 2009, 8.0 percent of seniors living alone (925,000 households) were food insecure.
  • Food insecurity exists in every county in America, ranging from a low of 5 percent in Steele County, ND to a high of 38 percent in Wilcox County, AL.[3]

Nine states exhibited statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average 2008-2010:1

 United States                    14.6%
 Mississippi                      19.4%
 Texas                            18.8%
 Arkansas                         18.6%
 Alabama                          17.3%
 Georgia                          16.9%
 Ohio                             16.4%
 Florida                          16.1%
 California                       15.9%
 North Carolina                   15.7%

Use of Emergency Food Assistance and Federal Food Assistance Programs

  • In 2010, 4.8 percent of all U.S. households (5.6 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times.2
  • In 2010, 59.2 percent of food-insecure households participated in at least one of the three major Federal food assistance programs –Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamp Program), The National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.2
  • Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to an estimated 37 million low-income people annually, a 46 percent increase from 25 million since Hunger in America 2010.[4]
  • Among members of Feeding America, 74 percent of pantries, 65 percent of kitchens, and 54 percent of shelters reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites.4

[1] U.S. Census Bureau. Carmen  DeNavas-Walt, B. Proctor, C. Lee.  Income, Poverty, and Heath Insurance Coverage in the United States:  2009.

[2] USDA. Coleman-Jensen, A., Nord, M., Andrews, M., & Carlson, S.  Household Food Security in the United States in 2010.

[3] Feeding America. Gundersen, G., Waxman, E., Engelhard, E., & Brown, J. Map the Meal Gap, 2011.

[4]Rhoda Cohen, J., Mabli, F., Potter, Z., Zhao. Mathematica Policy Research, Feeding America.  Hunger in America 2010.  February 2010.


[i] U.S. Department of Labor.Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2010 Annual Average Unemployment Rates.

Feeding America Website

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Thanks to GBK Events – Gavin and his great staff. As always you host the best.

Related Posts:
Samantha Harris from Dancing with the Stars and Entertainment Tonight has Revealed her Cancer has Spread.

The Roxy Owner Nic Alder Receives an Excellance Award for Social Media Marketing

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The Gravity Summit at UCLA awarded Nic Adler an award at for Excellence in Social Media Marketing.

The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood, CA, has been an icon of rock and roll since it’s Neil Young Opening in 1973 till today. Great bands and not so great bands appear there nightly celebrating The Roxy’s long prestigious Rock Hall of Fame Status.

Nic Adler, son of the Roxy’s founder and famous  producer Lou Adler, is now owner and manager of the famed venue and is using new social technologies to keep true to the history, but also use building of community in the rock marketplace to make sure the Roxy continues to thrive for the next 40 years.

Nic took minute after his acceptance speech to tell us about how he felt as this was his first, hopefully of many, awards.

Nic also a little to me about which social media platforms he is using and why.

Nic held an after party at the famed “On the Rox” bar after the event and it was a fun evening with great people and an incredible blues singer award-winning Alligator recording artist Janiva Magness. Incredible entertainment in a bar steeped in Rock History. A great evening thanks to Beverly Macy and Nic – Thanks. – JW

Nic Adler

Sunset Strip / Social / Vegan / iPhotographerNic Adler

After years as a band manager, promoter, and restauranteur, Nic took the helm at The Roxy in 1998. An entrepreneur and community builder, Nic was drawn to the cutting edge concepts he found in the burgeoning field of social media.

In 2007 he launched a blog that went on to win The VH-1 Rock Honors Award for Best Music Venue Website. Always an early adaptor Nic began tweeting in 2008 and is now the #1 Music Venue on Twitter and Facebook in the world. As his social media program grew, Nic began to see the importance of being a part of the larger community of the Sunset Strip and the City of West Hollywood.

Nic AdlerNic is co-producer of the Sunset Strip Music Festival, which draws over 30,000 music fans to the city every August and celebrates the Strip’s legacy as it highlights some of music’s newest talent.

He is Vice President of the Sunset Strip Business Association and a regular at City Council meetings where he is leading efforts to bring the community together. Featured in the New York Times, Mashable, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, and cover stories in LABJVenues Today and Nightclub and Bar Magazine, Nic is reinventing his club, his street and eventually his city using the fundamental concepts of community building inherent in social media.

@nicadler

Social.Vegan — @theroxy @theroxyLOT @ontherox @SSMF @LAVeganBeerFest http://www.pinterest.com/nicadler

Sunset Strip, CA · http://about.me/nicadler

The Roxy SignThe Roxy

From TheRoxyOnSunset.com

Fans and performers alike will readily tell the tales of their more memorable Roxy experiences. Such is the influence of one of the country’s most legendary and influential music venues.

From the Roxy’s 1973 opener featuring Neil Young, to Bruce Springsteen’s now-classic 1975 performances, the history of The Roxy Theatre is paved with icons, whether it was Guns N’ Roses’ pre-stardom shows, Miles Davis, Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, or others. Three decades on, the club has also been a popular performance Mecca for other entertainment, including stage productions, comedy shows, and performance art.

Among the club’s unique features are comfortable booth seating, full-service and draft bar, and a menu that features a modest array of dishes to keep appetites satisfied. The Roxy’s open dance floor and superb sound facilities offer fans one of the most intimate entertainment experiences around. There’s also “On The Rox,” an on-site, after-hours facility that has been the setting for some of Hollywood’s hottest parties.

Located above The Roxy and overlooking Sunset Blvd., “On The Rox” features its own full-service bar and DJ booth with proprietary sound system. Always in touch with its past, The Roxy lets fans glimpse at the legacy when they enter the club, thanks to an extensive collection of artist performance photos that adorn the club’s walls.

This is from the article about the Roxy in Wikipedia:

The roxy bmarleyThe Roxy Theatre (often just The Roxy) is the lengendary nightclub located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. It was opened on September 23, 1973 by Elmer Valentine and Lou Adler along with original partners David Geffen, Elliot Roberts and Peter Asher. They took over building previously occupied by a strip club owned by Chuck Landis called the Largo. (Adler was actually responsible for bringing the stage play Rocky Horror Show to the United States, and it opened its first American run at The Roxy Theatre in 1974, before it was made into the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show the next year.)

Hundreds of famous and yet-to-be-famous acts such as Nirvana (band), Tori Amos, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Al Stewart, Jane’s Addiction and David Bowie have played this highly prestigious venue. The small On The Rox bar above the club has hosted a wide variety of debauchery in its history; it was a regular hangout for John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Alice Cooper and Keith Moon during Lennon’s “lost weekend” in 1975, and in the 1980s hosted parties arranged by “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss.

According to LA.com, On The Rox “may be forever known as the club where John Belushi partied before fatally ODing. That may sound like a sordid reason for the club’s fame, but it only underscores the hard-partying reputation that befits a room equipped with two stripper poles. Recently, it has hosted private DJ nights as well as after-parties following the shows downstairs; on a Tuesday night not long ago, all three members of buzz band Kings of Leon were spotted heading upstairs to rock out with the Mooney Suzuki after their Roxy show.”

http://theroxyonsunset.com/

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Gravity Summit

logo gravity summitGravity Summit, Inc. is a real-time social business company dedicated to educating, informing, and empowering executives and professionals on the power of real-time social media.  We host premiere events, design and conduct corporate education, and offer strategic consulting services to both large Fortune 500 brands as well as rising companies.

We help bridge the gap between real-time social tools and the business community.   Executives and decision makers, marketing professionals, small business owners, advertisers, PR professionals, and others, learn how to leverage social platforms to amplify their message and successfully engage with consumers.

www.GravitySummit.com

Tears for Fears’ Curt Smith on Creating Sales, Marketing and Community Using Social Media

Curt Smith Tears for FearsCurt Smith, co-founder of  the multi-platinum British music group Tears For Fears,, with which he continues to tour worldwide, as well as an acclaimed solo musician.

talks to us after his speech at the 2012 Gravity Summit UCLA where he spoke mainly about how music recording, production, distribution, sales, marketing and building fan base community more has changed drastically in the last 20 years.

[SCROLL DOWN TO SEE CURT’S GRAVITY SUMMIT PRESENTATION]
[youtube=http://youtu.be/mzbo-dsOgSM]
Curt also went into some detail about how he builds community in order to build sales using social media in very creative ways.

Curt has recently started projects using social media to gather musicians directly without having to go through studio management and by finding them through the unique ability of many artists to share their wares using services like Sound Cloud and others

Curt’s talk was brilliant and his music is prominant in my music collection. It was great to get to meet Curt and even a greater experience to be able spend some time with him at this wonderful summit. So thank you to Beverly Macy for putting on this event and to Curt for graciously giving his time. – JW

tears for fears Songs from the big chairTears For Fears

From Wikopedia / Facebook

Tears for Fears are an English pop/rock band formed in 1981 by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.

Founded after the dissolution of their first band, the mod-influenced Graduate, they were initially associated with the New Wave synthesiser bands of the early 1980s but later branched out into mainstream rock and pop, which led to international chart success.

Their platinum-selling debut album, The Hurting, reached number one on the UK Album Chart, while their second album, Songs from the Big Chair, reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, achieving multi-platinum status in both the UK and the United States. Following the release of their third platinum-selling album, The Seeds of Love (1989), Smith and Orzabal parted company in 1991, though Orzabal retained the Tears for Fears name throughout the remainder of the 1990s. The duo re-formed in 2000, and released an album of new material, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, in 2004. To date, Tears for Fears have sold over 25 million albums worldwide, including more than 8 million in the U.S.

curt smith tears for fearsCurt Smith

Curt Smith is co-founder of  the multi-platinum British music group Tears For Fears, with which he continues to tour worldwide, as well as an acclaimed solo musician. He recently re-released his long out-of-print album Mayfield, adding a bonus version of “Trees” (feat. Janice Whaley) to the album’s original tracklist.

Smith also writes music for film, television and the web, most recently scoring the independent feature Meth Head,. He is a regular speaker at creative, media and technology events including TEDxHollywood, TEDxSan Francisco, the Billboard Film & TV Music Conference, the USC Annenberg Online Communities program, and the UCLA Gravity Summit.

BONUS:

Curt Smith’s Gravity Summit Presentation: [youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=n49aipQYsk8&w=500&h=310]

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Gravity Summit

logo gravity summitGravity Summit, Inc. is a real-time social business company dedicated to educating, informing, and empowering executives and professionals on the power of real-time social media.  We host premiere events, design and conduct corporate education, and offer strategic consulting services to both large Fortune 500 brands as well as rising companies.

We help bridge the gap between real-time social tools and the business community.   Executives and decision makers, marketing professionals, small business owners, advertisers, PR professionals, and others, learn how to leverage social platforms to amplify their message and successfully engage with consumers.

www.GravitySummit.com

365 Thank Yous – John Kralik – Author 101 Series

[youtube hhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vESUyUqXx_I&fs=1&hl=en_US]

365 Thank Yous Facebook Page

365 Thank Yous Facebook Page

John Kralik was invited by Rick Frishman to speak at the 2011 Author 101 University Event in Los Angeles. JW Najarian interviewed John about his book and how he became published.

365 Thank Yous

One recent December, at age 53, John Kralik found his life at a terrible, frightening low: his small law firm was failing; he was struggling through a painful second divorce; he had grown distant from his two older children and was afraid he might lose contact with his young daughter; he was living in a tiny apartment where he froze in the winter and baked in the summer.

John was 40 pounds overweight; his girlfriend had just broken up with him; and overall, his dearest life dreams–including hopes of upholding idealistic legal principles and of becoming a judge–seemed to have slipped beyond his reach.

Then, during a desperate walk in the hills on New Year’s Day, John was struck by the belief that his life might become at least tolerable if, instead of focusing on what he didn’t have, he could find some way to be grateful for what he had.

Inspired by a beautiful, simple note his ex-girlfriend had sent to thank him for his Christmas gift, John imagined that he might find a way to feel grateful by writing thank-you notes. To keep himself going, he set himself a goal–come what may–of writing 365 thank-you notes in the coming year.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJGBujEmxKs&fs=1&hl=en_US]One by one, day after day, he began to handwrite thank yous–for gifts or kindnesses he’d received from loved ones and coworkers, from past business associates and current foes, from college friends and doctors and store clerks and handymen and neighbors, and anyone, really, absolutely anyone, who’d done him a good turn, however large or small. Immediately after he’d sent his very first notes, significant and surprising benefits began to come John’s way–from financial gain to true friendship, from weight loss to inner peace. While John wrote his notes, the economy collapsed, the bank across the street from his office failed, but thank-you note by thank-you note, John’s whole life turned around.

365 Thank Yous is a rare memoir: its touching, immediately accessible message–and benefits–come to readers from the plainspoken storytelling of an ordinary man. Kralik sets a believable, doable example of how to live a miraculously good life. To read 365 Thank Yous is to be changed.

About the Author

John Kralik was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended the University of Michigan for college and law school. He practiced law for thirty years, and was a partner in the law firms of Hughes Hubbard & Reed, Miller Tokuyama Kralik & Sur, and Kralik & Jacobs. In 2009, he was appointed a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. He lives in the Los Angeles area.

Rick Frishman’s Author 101

logo author 101Are you curious about what publishers like Harper Collins, Morgan James, Adams Media, Wiley, Random House, and Simon & Schuster are looking for? What is the best way to get your manuscript read when you’re an unpublished author? Want to know the biggest mistakes to avoid when writing book proposals? You’ll be engaged as these top pros share their expertise, reveal the inner workings of the publishing industry, and discuss various approaches to common marketing and publishing challenges.

Additional bonus after hours cocktail party where you’ll have the opportunity to network with speakers from the day, industry experts and other attendees.
Author 101 University Event Website: www.author101university.com