After earning a BA in Theatre at the University of British Columbia, Shari developed an understanding of the business world by flogging stories about fast food chains and drug companies to the news media, while employed by the world’s largest PR agency. She’s been putting the insights she gained to much better use in the non-profit sector ever since.

She co-founded the BC Association for Media Education and served for eight years as the President of MediaWatch. She produced a TV series for WTN about women and the media while completing a Masters degree in Communications at Simon Fraser University. And she performed regular media analysis commentaries on CBC Radio and TV while writing a weekly column for The Vancouver Sun, where she tackled a wide variety of subjects, from political polling and news construction to violence against women.

In 2000, she took a break from teaching critical media studies and strategic business communications to serve as press secretary for a BC premier. The experience inspired her first play, “Revenge of the Pressed Secretary.”

In her keynote presentations and media literacy workshops, Shari shamelessly exploits contemporary advertising campaigns and mainstream media images to engage her audiences. She employs the healing properties of humour to redirect the understandable outrage that sometimes results. And she shares true stories about effective activism to motivate children and adults alike.

Her first book, Made You Look - How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know, has been called “a kind of NO LOGO for kids.” It won the Canadian Children’s Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year award, and has been shortlisted for four children’s choice awards.

Shari’s second book, In Your Face - The Culture of Beauty and You, is designed to disabuse teenagers of the notion that they have to look like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie in order to get a date, get a job or get a life. (Think The Beauty Myth, but with humour and visuals.) In Your Face recently garnered the $10,000 Norma Fleck award for best non-fiction Canadian children’s book.

Shari is married to author, historian and university administrator, David Mitchell.