Born on a cold day during the Nixon administration, schooled on the mean streets of Minnetonka, Minnesota; filled nutritious, delicious General Mills products, Stephanie was made to improvise. She earned a BA in communications (a.k.a., the "goldmine major") from the University of Pennsylvania. In between Noam Chomski readings, she performed with Without a Net, Penn's improv comedy troupe. There she met a crazy kid who called himself Avish. Like Mary Richards (sort of), Stephanie moved to Minnesota to pursue a television career after college. While working as a production assistant on such hits Newton's Apple, Stephanie won a Jerome Fellowship for Playwrighting and sold a teleplay to the fine folks who brought you "I Lead Two Lives" starring Connie Seleca. She studied improvisation at Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop and became a member of its second string company. As she worked a mix of slacker jobs (including baby wrangler, mascot escort, movie theater inspector, playwright) on the fringe of Minneapolis Bohemia, she thought -- if being sporadically employed in Minneapolis is fun, it could only be 10 times better in New York! Like Rhoda (at least more like Rhoda than Mary) she headed back East. In the Big Apple, Stephanie bit the glamorous life -- fetching potato chips for Whitney Houston, nursing the VH1 Divas special photocopier, picking up the Backstreet Boyz's socks, researching historic ham for the Food Network. But like Mr. Kotter (except for the facial hair), Stephanie was lured by the world of education. Wiping the stardust from her eyes, she took a "real job" at the University of Pennsylvania Library. Back in Philly, Stephanie met up with Avish again. He threw that stardust right back in her face by accepting her into Polywumpus and she's been dazzling him with her dance moves ever since.