Before out lesbian Sheryl McDonald nearly made it to the final round of ABC's American Inventor, the 41-year-old had been working as an airline agent for Virgin Atlantic. She had been given five month's notice that she would be let go in September 2005, so—before she even knew about the show's existence—she made plans to work on an idea she'd had for an invention: an umbrella that inverts upward and retracts into its own handle.
McDonald had had the idea for more than a year and had even taken a class about the invention process. So she hired an “invention coach,” who eventually told her about Simon Cowell's new reality show/million-dollar competition just weeks before the first audition.
The idea for her “In-brella” came to McDonald one rainy morning in 2004, as she was getting into her car to go to work. She was struggling to close her umbrella without scratching the roof of her new Audi or getting her uniform (skirt, heels, hose—no pants allowed) wet in the process.
“When I would stand up outside my car to raise the umbrella in order to close it, then I'd get my leg wet and my arm wet,” she recalls. She says it's a challenge for anyone using an umbrella: “Then once you manage to close it, you bring a sopping wet canopy onto your lap then onto your car seat and then onto the floor of your car.” She remembers shouting ‘Why can't someone make an inverting umbrella?'” A few months later McDonald's visiting nephew listened to her complaint and told her she should move forward with the idea herself.
By the time McDonald heard about the American Inventor auditions last November she had roughly two weeks to pull something together from her exploratory sketches. So she filed for a provisional patent and asked a friend to produce animated 2D drawings of how the product would work. Working with her invention coach the night before the audition, McDonald figured out a pitch in a matter of hours.
Sketches in hand, along with more than 10,000 other hopefuls, she got in line the next day just after 6 AM. With nothing to eat or drink, she spent the next 11 hours talking to other inventors, most of whom would reveal nothing about their inventions.
“It was quintessential L.A., at Hollywood and Highland,” she says, referring to the intersection near the historic Grauman's Chinese Theater as well as the new building that hosts the Academy Awards. “We had a view of the Hollywood sign and it was a gorgeous day,” says the San Francisco native who has lived in L.A. for six years now.
Around five o'clock in the evening it was McDonald's turn to pitch her idea to the audition team, and she sauntered in singing “Singing in the Rain.” She had no prototype to speak of but she fielded questions and showed her sketches.
Two weeks later, McDonald and her partner, feature film editor Denise Howard, were making their way to the movie theater to see the opening of Brokeback Mountain. McDonald's cell phone rang and she learned that she had made it to the second round.
“At that point I knew I needed to have a little bit more than I had,” she says. “If I had a prototype that would have been great but I wasn't sure that that was going to happen.” Howard reminded McDonald that the had purchased some of the miniature umbrellas used to garnish cocktails and suggested she go out to the garage to find them. “When I did, it turns out they were lanterns, not umbrellas. But if you take the top part off of the lantern, it is my umbrella!”
Howard quickly helped McDonald get a plan in motion. “I call her a volcano,” McDonald says, “because when she gets something in her brain she can figure it out like that. She goes balls out and gets it going.”
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