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Twenty-eight-year-old Amanda Lipitz was never encouraged to become the Broadway producer she is today.

Instead, like all the little girls in Baltimore with stars in their eyes, she got acting, dancing, and singing lessons. "When I was growing up, I loved the theater," she recalled. "But no one said, 'Hey, do you want to be a director, a producer, or a set designer?'"

So all her efforts leaned toward acting. In school she was in plays and musicals. At a performance and visual arts camp in the summer, at age 14, she had a chance to choreograph 23 other campers in a musical. "I loved idea of putting it all together, having a creative vision of a piece," she said.

For college, she headed off to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In what may have been a harbinger of an as-yet-unknown future, one of her acting professors made her a "producer for a day" because she and a friend had raised $25,000 for the Stained Glass Project, which provides inspirational reading material to ailing hospital patients.

After graduation, Lipitz made the leap pretty quickly to becoming a real producer, and she will share insights into what it takes to put together a musical at the Women's Campaign Annual Spring Luncheon of the United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks, April 30, at Greenacres Country Club in Lawrenceville. The Women's Campaign will also honor local philanthropist Rose D. Movitch. For more information call (609) 219-0555, email mailbox@ujfpmb.org, or visit www.ujfpmb.org.

Lipitz had always loved musicals and grew up watching the "Sound of Music," "Mary Poppins," and "Annie." At NYU she got interested in the composer Jason Robert Brown, and in a musical he wrote, "The Last Five Years." After following him and the play through different concerts and readings, she saw it in an off-Broadway production and fell in love. Her father, Roger Lipitz, formerly chair of Meridian Healthcare Corporation of Baltimore and of the Baltimore Development Corporation, urged her to call the producer and find out whether the play was going to Broadway.

She made the call and the producer said to the newly minted graduate, "If you just graduated, you must need a job. I'm looking for an assistant." That was her step in the door.

Lipitz turned out to be a terrible assistant, not great at filing or organizing, but her strength turned out to be in the skills required of a producer. "I was on the phone with investors, at creative meetings, and in the inner workings of what a producer does," she said.

Recognizing her talents, her boss gave Lipitz her first real break. He had received a script for "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" -- a first draft with a couple of songs. "I just really loved it," she recalled, "and my boss said to me, 'Do you want to be a producer on this?'" He told her how much seed money she would need to bring in to get the project going. She went home to think about it, and her boyfriend at the time, now her husband, Gregory Smith, told her, "You have to do this. This is a huge opportunity!"

So she did. She hit the phones, called friends and some family, and one person led her to the next. At 23, she had lots of energy and enthusiasm and would send people songs, the scripts, bios of the creative team, and the plan of action, but she wouldn't push them too hard. "I told them what they would become part of and that they should invest because they wanted to be supportive of the arts -- not to get rich," she said. She would often give people a little advice, too: "If it's your last $25,000, don't invest in Broadway." In the end "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" ran for two-and-a-half years and was nominated for a Tony, so her investors did make some money.

In her work on "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," said Lipitz, "I did lot of watching because it was the first time. But after that, she was a professional. She became lead producer of "Gork!", a one-woman show that was named best solo show at the New York International Fringe Festival. Soon after she produced the Broadway play "Legally Blonde The Musical," and she created, conceived, and executive produced the MTV reality show, "Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search For Elle Woods." "I had never done a TV show in my life," she said, "but one of the things I learned is, it may be different medium, but a producer is a producer is a producer."

Lipitz said she has a strong Jewish identity, was raised in a kosher home, and went to shul every Saturday. Now she gives her time to Jewish projects like UJA events or the kosher food pantry. She was honored by Jewish Women International in 2008 as one of 10 Jewish women to watch.

Lipitz now has a baby on the way, but she is also at work on two musicals. One is "Stop Talking: An Original Musical" by Julian Fleisher, and she will share a couple of his songs at the luncheon; she is also involved in a play about superheroes with Margo Lion, producer of "Hairspray."

Aside from being an accomplished Broadway producer, Lipitz has a mission to educate parents of daughters who approach her regularly for advice. "I try to encourage them," she said, "that there are so many things they can do besides just being an actor."