Michele Palermo

Michele’s got a knack for digging into the messy, hilarious, and painfully real stories behind women’s lives—no wonder she got snatched up for TV after wowing people with her play, Ladies in Waiting. Since then, she’s been all over the place: writing pilots, cranking out episodes, teaming up with heavy-hitters like Peter Horton and David E. Kelley, even cooking up The Mansion for LIFETIME (think Downton Abbey, but American politics and a lot more sass). She doesn’t just write—she directs and produces too, snagging awards for indie films like Ladies in Waiting (yep, the play again) and Unreel: A True Hollywood Story, which pokes fun at Hollywood’s own ridiculousness. Oh, and she dipped into the wild world of web series with Chapin Circle, because why not? Her latest project, MIDDLEHOOD, is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and really hits home for anyone staring down the barrel of a midlife crisis. The show’s got this wickedly funny, sometimes painful vibe, following Lisa Giordano-Navarro—a woman who pretty much detonates her own life at 50. Out of work, about to be single, wrangling her kid-at-heart brothers, dodging family drama, and juggling divorce, Lisa’s life is a tornado of aging parents and cultural chaos. Michele’s own backstory’s wild, too—Milwaukee to Rome, almost joined the CIA (seriously), wrote speeches for the Virginia First Lady, even did time in Martha Stewart’s tomato patch. Now, she’s passing it all on to students at Columbia, teaching the next generation how to write TV that actually matters.