A lifelong Philadelphian, Ms. Pinkenson graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls and Temple University. Her business career began with the successful launching of Plage Tahiti, a trend-setting boutique in Center City. She designed and manufactured a women’s apparel collection under the Plage Tahiti label for several years. Her clothes were sold nationally in stores like Bloomingdale’s and Strawbridge & Clothier, and she was the recipient of several design awards.

Prior to her appointment, Ms. Pinkenson worked as a costume designer and wardrobe stylist in the film industry. Among her feature credits are Mannequin II: On the Move, Renegades, Christmas on Division Street, and Confessions of a Suburban Girl. She is the first Film Office director to come to the post directly from film production.

Some of Ms. Pinkenson’s more than 200 credits during her tenure at the Film Office include:

• TriStar Pictures’ Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington
• Universal’s 12 Monkeys, starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt
• Turner Pictures’ Fallen, starring Denzel Washington
• Touchstone’s Beloved, starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover
• Touchstone’s Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson
• Touchstone’s The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis
• Touchstone’s Signs, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix
• Hack, a CBS television series starring David Morse & Andre Braugher
• Miramax’s Jersey Girl, starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and Liv Tyler
• The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, a Sci-Fi channel special
• Touchstone’s The Village, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, and Bryce Dallas Howard
• Touchstone’s National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage
• Cold Case, a CBS/Jerry Bruckheimer television show, starring Kathryn Morris
• The Real World Philadelphia, MTV’s season 15 of the popular reality show
• Newmarket’s The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon
• 20th Century Fox’s In Her Shoes, starring Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine and Toni Collette
• Disney’s Annapolis, starring James Franco
• Warner Bros’ Lady in the Water, starring Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard
• Lee Daniels Entertainment’s Shadowboxer, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Helen Mirren
• Disney’s Invincible, starring Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear
• Columbia Pictures’ Rocky Balboa, starring (and written and directed by) Sylvester Stallone
• Paramount Pictures’ Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by Antoine Fuqua
• Twentieth Century Fox’s The Happening, starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deshanel, John Leguizamo
• Fox 2000 Pictures’s Marley & Me, starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston
• Magnolia Pictures’ The Answer Man, starring Jeff Daniels and Lauren Graham
• DreamWorks’ Transformers 2, starring Shai LaBeouf and  Megan Fox
• Overture’s Law Abiding Citizen, starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler
• Dreamworks' The Lovely Bones, starring Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz
  

 And the soon to be released

• Paramount Pictures’ The Last Airbender, from director M. Night Shyamalan
• Columbia Pictures’ Untitled James L Brooks Project, starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson

In April 1999, Film at the Prince – The Sharon Pinkenson Film Project – was introduced at the Prince Music Theater as a venue for film festivals, independent and experimental films, film repertory, premieres of films made in Philadelphia, a family film program called For Kids/By Kids, special film events, and generally to serve as the heart of the Philadelphia film and video community. She serves as the Founding Producer.

By working with PA legislators of both sides of the aisle and Governor Rendell, Ms. Pinkenson played an instrumental role in the passage of the PA Film Production Tax Credit Program in 2004, the PA Film Production Grant program in 2006, and more recently, the $75 million Pennsylvania Film Production Tax Credit program. The current program provides for a 25% tax credit for qualified film production expenses incurred in the Commonwealth. Despite the 101 day delay in the passage of the FY 2010 PA budget, the tax credit program has proven to be so effective in creating jobs and stimulating business that the GPFO announced 2009 as its best year ever creating 2000 new jobs and impacting the regional economy with more than $500 million.

With such a large number of productions coming into town, and new tax incentives to expand the business, it is fitting that Philadelphia is developing the facilities to accommodate its fastest growing industry. In 1996, Ms. Pinkenson rescued the Philadelphia Civic Center from mothballs, and established the first municipally-owned soundstage in the US. The 40,000 square foot soundstage served as home to Beloved, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Hack, attracting nearly $200 million of economic impact for the region. In June of 2002, Ms. Pinkenson was instrumental in developing a site at the Philadelphia Navy Yard as a second soundstage facility in order to attract Jersey Girl away from Canada by reducing the cost locally. The massive 150,000 square foot facility in the back-lot surroundings of the Navy Yard has since played host to The Woodsman, The Village, Annapolis, and Invincible. Last year, Paramount Pictures invested in the Navy Yard as a film center by developing the former 100,000 sf seaplane hangar into a visual effects stage for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.

Recently, Pacifica Ventures, a real estate development company engaged in the building and management of movie studios in locations with attractive incentives, announced their decision to build a Hollywood style film studio in Delaware County. Ms. Pinkenson was instrumental in bringing this venture to the region, which will attract feature films and television series and create thousands of new jobs for our region. Groundbreaking and construction for the new studio is expected to begin soon with a planned opening in approximately one year. A second movie studio complex was announced in the former due to the tax credits: Norristown Studios at Logan Square which will be built in the Logan Square shopping center in Montgomery County.

Throughout her career Sharon has remained an important and recognizable figure in the Philadelphia community. In addition to her numerous memberships in professional organizations, she serves on Mayor Michael Nutter’s Cultural Advisory Council as well as Temple University’s President’s Advisory Board and Temple University School of Communications and Theater, Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design (from which she received a Doctor of Humane Letters, causa honoris), Big Picture Alliance, the selection boards for One Film Philadelphia, Diamondscreen: a Temple University School of Communications and Theater student film festival and the advisory boards of the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and the Philadelphia Film Society. She has served on the search committee for the President of Kimmel Center and served on Mayor Nutter’s search committee to appoint the Chief Cultural Officer of the newly created Office of Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy for the City of Philadelphia. She was also named by Dunkin’ Donuts and the Philadelphia Eagles as one of the 75 Greatest Living Philadelphians and Philadelphia Magazine as one of the 50 most Powerful Philadelphians.