About Me

My name is Liza Cushnir, and I’m a junior at the University of Michigan. I’m majoring in Public Policy and minoring in Writing. 

I’m originally from Los Angeles, and growing up there definitely influenced who I am as a person. It made me a huge sports fan (and I’m a fan of all the right LA sports teams, a fact I take great pride in). Growing up in Los Angeles also exposed me to so much. In a city as large and diverse as Los Angeles, you can learn a lot just by keeping your eyes open. Although I think I probably would have been drawn to the criminal justice system regardless of where I lived, I think living in Los Angeles helped that interest develop even further. 

Los Angeles is also known to a lot of people for Hollywood and for being at the center of the entertainment industry. Interestingly enough, I never had a huge interest in the industry. I had plenty of friends whose parents worked in entertainment — producers, lawyers, comedians, musicians, you name it — but it was never something that drew me in. That’s part of what made writing the script for my fully realized project so interesting for me. The street I live on in LA literally connects two movie/TV studios. But I still had never ventured into scriptwriting, even for fun as a young kid. That was a fun part of the process for me. I got to see some of the things I absorbed through osmosis growing up, although I absorbed far less than I thought. Despite the little I had absorbed, I still had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It’s not that I thought scriptwriting would be easy, but I don’t think I realized just how different from other forms of writing I would find it.

Thank you for checking out my ePortfolio; I hope you enjoy!