On Thursday, November 29, the Canadian-based international organization A Celebration of Women honored Gil Mansergh for his decades of advocacy for children and families by selecting him as a Man of Action.

Gil’s biography featuring some of the powerful women who shaped his career, has been printed alongside those of previous Women of Action honorees including Kiev-born athlete, author, historian and philanthropist, H.S.H. Princess Karina Bagration-Mourkhransky; Scotland’s first Cancer Research UK Ambassador, Suzanne Fernando; First Lady of the USA, Michelle Obama, artist, and activist, mother and wife, Yoko Ono Lennon; as well as historic Women of Action like Hellen Keller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Sanger, and Jane Austen.

As Gil tells his Cinema Toast fans, “I don’t just watch movies and write about them (although in the holiday season it seems that way). I’m a husband, father and grandfather and the host/producer of the hour-long, Word By Word: Conversations With Writers radio show on KRCB-FM, a Psychological Educator  with degrees from Stanford, SF State and Indiana Universities, and the author of over sixty nonfiction manuals, books or curriculums. President Emeritis of the Redwood Writers branch of the California Writers Club, and resident film critic for the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, I’m also a first time novelist, with Harper Davis Publishers launching The Marvelous Journals of MIss Virginia Pettingill in October.”

But, as they say, “if you want to get something done ask a busy person—for the other kind has no time.”