Jerri Sher is no shrinking violet.
In the 1980s, she and her husband Alan, a tax accountant, were raising their family in Marblehead. Their daughters, Heather and Amy, attended Hillel Academy (now the Epstein Hillel School), and Alan volunteered as treasurer of the Jewish Journal. After teaching at Endicott College, Jerri decided to enter the business world. But, she didn’t just quietly switch careers; she smashed through a glass ceiling as the first woman to work in the transportation industry in the Northeast corridor.
Sher rose quickly in the sales and marketing department at Guaranteed Overnight Delivery, where she was trained by Tony Robbins, the top life coach and business strategist. “The male-oriented industry of transportation was difficult because people were not used to dealing with a woman, so I had to prove myself to be better than any man,” she said from her Los Angeles home.
Sher learned on the job, and she learned fast, negotiating freight contracts for Fortune 500 companies such as Gillette and Raytheon. “Little did I know that all of the skills I was learning were getting me ready to be a producer,” Sher said.
Sher’s schooling and first career were in the arts. The Fall River native earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s in art education from Springfield College, where she later became its youngest professor. Despite a demanding schedule in the trucking business, her creative drive never slowed down. With no formal training, she wrote a novel about a woman in the trucking business. “The Twig Painter,” a medical thriller that became a screenplay, fused her two careers – art teacher/painter and trucking sales representative – and wet her appetite for her third: movie screenwriter, director, and producer.
She dove in, determined to learn as much as she could about the filmmaking process. She helped out on any movie set that came to the North Shore and before long, one director recognized her business smarts and creative skills and told her she should set her sights on being a producer rather than “just” an art director.
Although a member of the elite LA-based Directors Guild since 1998, she had no access to its benefits from Massachusetts. After successfully producing several movies for others, she decided it was time to direct her own. “I was in my mid 50s when I said, ‘let’s move to LA,’” Sher said.
That was 18 years ago.
Other than missing friends and family, Sher found Hollywood spectacular. Despite never attending film school, her career flourished as she finally had direct entrée into the hub of the industry’s network. “I knew I was right where I was supposed to be,” she said.
Although Sher faced obstacles as a woman in another male-dominated industry, she already had overcome that challenge once and never let it bother her. “I am proving myself in this industry and am climbing to the top of the ladder despite the discrimination,” she said. “The word ‘no’ did not exist in my vocabulary. I had all the tools I needed to make films and thrive.”
Sher has since completed 22 film and television projects, including “Santa Monica Cares Step Up,” which earned her 2014 Emmy awards for directing and producing. This short documentary film, about a homeless man rescued by charity, was the highlight of Sher’s career. “It made me realize I only wanted to work on projects that would positively influence society,” she said.
Her latest film, “Quiet Explosions: Healing the Brain,” is a documentary about traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans, athletes, and others. Released last month on Amazon and Vimeo, the film explores under-publicized, non-pharmaceutical approaches that have led to complete healing in brain injury patients.
Based on “Tales from the Blast Factory,” the book by brothers Andrew and Adam Marr, the film highlights the breakthrough work of Dr. Daniel Amen (psychiatrist, clinical neuroscientist, and brain imaging specialist) and neuro-endocrinologist Dr. Mark L. Gordon, whose patients have been cured by his treatments. Super Bowl MVP Mark Rypien, Ben Driebergen (winner of “Survivor” and ex-Marine), and Shawn Dollar (champion surfer) tell their heart-wrenching stories of trauma and recovery. Podcast host Joe Rogan, an active Wounded Warriors supporter, interviews Gordon and Andrew Marr.
Although the film’s 10 characters are from all different walks of life with different clinical histories, they share one thing: at some point, each wanted to commit suicide. After watching the film together, they cried and hugged each other, grateful that others might understand the agony they had suffered.
“For Dr. Gordon, a neuro-endocrinologist, to come up with this treatment is mind boggling. Why does the whole world not know about this?” Sher asked. Her hope is her film will educate its audience ‒ especially doctors – about these groundbreaking solutions that help those with traumatic brain injury to heal.
Sher had a solid foundation in Judaism, and credits her Jewish background with steering her artistic choices and storytelling toward messages of tikkun olam (repairing the world). “I am definitely all about healing the planet and the people on it. Most of my recent projects are about healing and health,” she said.
Right now, however, she has two goals. One is for an Oscar to keep her two Emmy awards company. The second is to get the Veterans Administration to institute Dr. Gordon’s protocol. “And if we can do that, then I’ve done so much for society,” Sher said.
For more information, visit jerrisher.com and quietexplosions.com.
