I’m Ellen Scherer Crafts.

My story

My career began in the early 1990s as a clinical social worker helping children and families in crisis. That work rooted me in human behavior, resilience, and sparked my curiosity about what people actually need to make change in their lives. I left that world not because it didn’t matter, but because I needed a different kind of impact.

What followed was a career I never could have planned. From September 1992 to December 1998, I produced live entertainment and high-roller events at Bally’s Casino in Atlantic City — Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Frankie Valli, live HBO boxing, and a Wild West parade on the Boardwalk with Kenny Rogers. In January 1999 I pivoted to nonprofit arts leadership as Director of Development at Mainstage Center for the Arts, building every system from scratch as the only full-time employee. Then into Fortune 100 corporate America at American Express in 2001, and seven-plus years as a strategic partner for pharmaceutical giant Merck where I led their largest product launches, built their Strategic Meetings Management program, helped executives plan their most important meetings and presentations, and was named as the only outside vendor on their M&A transition team during the Schering-Plough acquisition.

In September 2012 I moved to Los Angeles, working in a role that didn’t fit at Aimia after leaving the Merck team. I got married. Then I was recruited to join MUFG Americas as VP of Marketing in 2013. Becoming a parent, and a toxic culture, made the decision for me — I left MUFG while pregnant to turn my full attention to building something of my own. No safety net. My daughter was born in October 2015.

What was going on in the background was that in 2013, my husband and I had started Macrocosm Entertainment. No studio. No safety net. We were working full time in other careers, but we had a belief in the stories we wanted to tell.

In 2015 I made Macrocosm my main focus, and we went on to create the Lantern City comic series which found a publisher through sheer persistence: BOOM! Studios. We then co-created The Not-So Secret Society graphic novel through their KaBOOM! imprint. And we produced “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street,” a feature documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, released by HBO and Universal, and won an Emmy Award.

Throughout those years I was also doing something else: coaching people on how to speak. From 2018 through 2025 I worked with Point Global Productions as a freelance producer and speaker coach, delivering executive presence workshops and 1:1 speaker coaching to senior leaders at major pharmaceutical and Fortune 100 companies. If producing taught me how to tell a story that moves an audience, speaker coaching taught me how to help other people find their own voice and own a room. That work lives in everything I do as a coach today.

My passion for advocacy began long before the marches. When I was a social worker helping children and families navigate poverty, addiction, and crisis in the early 1990s, I saw firsthand how policy and politics shape people’s lives in ways most people never see. That never left me.

In 2016 I became one of the original producers of the Women’s March in Los Angeles which was held in January 2017 (the largest in the country) and served as Communications and Marketing Director of the Women’s March LA Foundation through 2018, leading messaging, media strategy, and community outreach for both the 2017 and 2018 marches. Formally recognized for this work by the City of Los Angeles, the Board of LA County Supervisors, and the City of West Hollywood.

From 2018 to 2024 I served as a lead volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America across two states — leading the statewide Wear Orange Campaign in California in 2020 and serving as Communications Lead in Connecticut in 2022. I also managed the Be SMART For Kids program, a gun safety education resource for CT families.

And becoming a mother cracked everything open in ways I didn’t expect — revealing the mental load, the identity shift, and the reinvention that ultimately led me here. That experience didn’t derail me. It led me here. Launching Life Crafts Coaching in 2026, and it’s time.