Debra Pearlman

I grew-up in the country spending my time in the woods.  Animals and wildlife became a passion and when I saw my first Jacque Cousteau film I knew what I wanted to be when I grew-up….the wife of his son!  Oh how times have changed….BUT that passion for the environment never waivered and now I am a documentary filmmaker specializing in natural history, environmental and social justice films.

My wanderlust began when as soon as I finished college, Emerson, where I majored in photography and minored in Art History.  I’d traveled in Europe in high school and knew that what I really wanted to experience was something completely different from my upbringing.  I spent four years traveling from Korea to Australia and just about every country in between.  I had adventures that I could not have dreamed of…climbing Himalayan mountains, harvesting opium with the hill tribes in the Golden Triangle, attending teachings of the Dali Lama in Bodhgaya, and volunteering with Mother Teresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying.

Returning home after 4 years in Asia and the Middle East was difficult. I really had little “real job” experience to sell to an employer and was no longer “just out of school.”  What to do? What to do?  Well, being a resourceful woman (something travel in Asia will teach you) I lied my way into a job at WNET-TV in New York City.  It helped that my best friend worked in television news and she thought I’d make a good videotape editor (I had no idea what that was at the time).  I went on an interview, said I knew how to edit, and voliá! a job editing the foreign news feeds.  Long story short, this led to work at other TV stations and eventually to a post-production facility called VideoWorks.  VideoWorks taught me about animation, digital effects, and storytelling with pictures.  It also gave me my first big gig working on wildlife films, a series called The Animal Express.  From NYC, I went to Lake Placid to edit and produce weird sports (X/C skiing, Rugby, Biathlon, Luge, Bobsled…you get the picture) and that allowed me to work at a couple of Olympic games.

I’d traveled all around the world, but did not spend much time in my own country so I left LP and headed out west.    I traveled the back roads and highways stopping when I felt like it and seeing what I wanted to see.  Just like my overseas travels, I was on my own and loving it.

I’d just begun to settle in Seattle when another girlfriend (a reporter from my TV news days) tracked me down and made me an offer I could not refuse.  Come back to NY and work with me at the Bronx Zoo as an in-house filmmaker. I worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society for 8 years, even working on a degree in environmental science.  Along the way I met amazing women who were out to experience life on their own terms and encouraged me to do the same.

I left WCS and started my own production company, Peal Productions LLC.  I now make my living as a documentary filmmaker who specializes in natural history and wildlife.  I get to travel and experience amazing things, but I also know how hard it is to be a woman of a certain age, trying to make a living.  I expanded my production company to include work in digital media, social media, and website design.  This combines my photography/graphic arts/environmental science degrees and keeps me employed.

My production work brought me to the Kennedy Krieger School Programs in Baltimore, MD where I work as their Web Content Coordinator and I still have my contracts with Discovery and Animal Planet.

Living life on my own terms may not have been the easy way out, but I’ve certainly had great adventures and met fabulous people.  And all because of the amazing girlfriends I’ve made and kept close throughout my life.

All The Single Girlfriends is more than a social media group, it’s a lifestyle choice.  I look forward to meeting you all!

I hope you will enjoy reading my posts.