About the Author

Lori Hartman Gervasi is a speaker, author, and black belt self-defense expert trained in American Karate.

Fight Like a Girl…and Win: Defense Decisions for Women, Lori’s first book, was endorsed by the country’s leading authority on security and bestselling author of The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker.  It was featured or reviewed in The Chicago Tribune, New York Metro, The Library Journal, and others.  Lori appeared on NBC Television’s Weekend Today Show to discuss personal security and demonstrate self-defense moves.  She was the featured cover story in Southern California’s May 2009 issue of Inland Living magazine and her tips were included in Health magazine’s September 2009 Survival Guide.

As a freelance writer, Lori’s essays have been published in Country America, Country Woman, and Poetry In Motion.   An article on awareness was published in The Cape Cod Times.  She received Second Prize in an Islands magazine essay contest and has won several other fiction and nonfiction awards.

As a public speaker on self-defense strategies, Lori has addressed a variety of regional and national organizations and groups geared towards women.  Clients include various churches, as well as The American Heart Association, MOPS (Moms of Preschoolers), CA (formerly Computer Associates), The National Association of Women in Construction, Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority at UCLA, Delta Delta Delta Sorority at USC, Classic Travels, Women’s Connection, Salvation Army Hero’s Club, and Circle K.

Lori graduated UCLA’s Television/Film School, with emphases on News, Television Production, and Film Criticism.  She anchored the campus news broadcast for UCLA’s Television Station.

At the ABC News Bureau in Los Angeles, Lori worked as a Production Assistant, Desk Assistant, and Researcher, covering stories for World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20, and Good Morning America.  At Channel 9 in Los Angeles, she was a Talent Coordinator for the Mid-Morning L.A. talk show.  She modeled for Mid-Morning L.A. and for the station’s TV Guide magazine advertisements.  She co-hosted a daily fitness program with exercise guru, Jack LaLanne, called “Jack LaLanne and You”.  In the Channel 9 News Department, she held a variety of Writer/Producer positions spanning ten years, with duties that included writing news stories, producing newscasts, segment producing, field producing, series writing and producing, overseeing the Entertainment News Division, awards season coverage coordinating, and producing and writing an hour-long Academy Awards Special.  She also filled in as a weather reporter.

Gervasi lives in Southern California with her husband and two sons.

 

Gervasi’s mission is to save women’s lives. She intends to get them excited and organized about self-protection while giving them a new sense of power. Her message is simple and straightforward. Women need to be prepared for battle. They need to give themselves permission. They’ve got to see it coming. They must discover force levels in order to counterattack in legal and appropriate ways. With their femininity firmly in place, women must break through the molds and mindsets that hinder their security measures. They must learn to exercise their mighty power of choice by making all of their decisions ahead of time. These decisions are a woman’s most valuable weapons of defense. There are moral, mental, and ethical decisions to prepare her mind. There are physical decisions to get her body moving. A woman’s job has never been so clearly set before her. She must decide everything, today, in a quiet moment, before the bad guy shows up. Then, when dangerous times come, her body will know exactly what to do.