Happiness...as a Second Language: A Guidebook to Achieving Lasting, Permanent Happiness (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781484101186)

Valerie Alexander started her career in the Silicon Valley during the Dot-Com gold rush of the late 1990s, where she worked on some of the most high-profile transactions of the decade as a securities lawyer, an investment banker and an Internet executive. From 2000 to 2001, she returned to Indiana to care for her mother, and in her absence the Internet bubble burst, leaving her no choice but to move to Los Angeles to write and direct movies. As a screenwriter, Valerie has worked with Joel Schumacher, Catherine Zeta Jones, Ice Cube and others. Not satisfied writing scripts that never got made, she co-wrote, produced and directed the award-winning short film, Making the Cut, as well as numerous commercials and public service announcements. Valerie received her B.A. from Trinity University and her J.D. and M.S. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. In the spring of 2010, she returned to Berkeley Law to teach the legal ethics seminar, "Representation of Law in Film," and she continues to lecture at colleges and film schools across the country with her entertaining talk, "How to Survive in Hollywood (Despite Having a Female Brain)." Valerie lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer and producer Rick Alexander, and their ill-mannered German Shepherd, Pepper.