Mentorship 101
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 5-6:30 PM PT | Online

Everyone tells you to "find a mentor." Nobody tells you how to actually be worth mentoring. This isn't about networking tips or coffee strategies. It's about understanding what gets writers' assistants promoted, what makes mid-level writers indispensable, and why some people build careers while others stay stuck. We'll break down the unspoken rules of writers' rooms, decode the actual hierarchy (spoiler: "Story Editor" doesn't mean what you think), and explain why your job isn't to be brilliant — it’s to be consistently useful. Whether you're trying to land your first assistant job or figure out how to turn coffee into real mentorship, we'll give you the specific moves that work and the mistakes that sink you. Plus: the traffic light system for when to speak up, why your relationship with studio execs matters even if they don't know your name yet, and what to do when the showrunner looks at you like you just suggested setting the episode on Mars.

Dara Resnik

Dara Resnik is a writer and showrunner whose credits include Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Pushing Daisies, Mistresses, Castle, Jane the Virgin, Shooter, Joey Soloway's I Love Dick, and Marvel's Daredevil. She created and showran Home Before Dark for Apple TV+, a drama inspired by real-life 12-year-old crime reporter Hilde Lysiak, and followed season 2 with showrunning The Horror of Dolores Roach for Amazon Studios and Blumhouse. Dara wrote and produced the independent film California Scenario with her partner James Takata which debuted at the 2026 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Dara is in development on a limited series about Robert Durst and an adaptation of romance novel Viable Threat, both for UCP/Peacock.

Alex Rubin

Alex is a fixer. A former press manager, she can fix your image. A former Apple Genius, she can fix your phone. A former PA for the Radio City Rockettes, she can fix… anything. So she’s well equipped to write about broken families as they attempt to piece themselves back together. This is, of course, inspired by Alex’s own fascinating family of government agents, body snatchers, and cult defectors.

Alex started her career as the showrunners’ assistant and script coordinator on Amazon’s The Horror of Dolores Roach followed by a season as the writers room assistant for Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias. She is now a staff writer on Sweet Magnolias season 5, releasing June 2026. Alex has written for iHeart Radio’s “Solve” and PEG’s “Jackie Cox Variety Show”. After graduating from USC with her MFA in Writing for Film & Television, Alex was selected for the 2021 WIF/Black List Episodic Lab with her pilot Lost Hope Hotel. She is a FORGE Fellow, the inaugural Script Writing Score Fellow, and one of ISA’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2023.