Laurie Trotta is a writer, media analyst, producer and public relations professional specializing in social issues in entertainment. An established national voice for promoting awareness about such subjects as children's programming, artists’ rights & responsibilities, professional ethics in the entertainment industry, violence in the media, media ratings, and diversity onscreen, Trotta has served as a commentator on CNN News, Fox National News, National Public Radio, the BBC, and other outlets of the world press.

Trotta is currently organizing film festivals around social issues. She created the Moving Pictures Magazine Short Film Contest series, which awards entertainment industry prizes to filmmakers working on material with a social message; and in 2005, she co-founded the E2 Ethics of Entertainment Conference and Film Festival at Arizona State University.

Her work in media issues has included developing guidelines for creating quality children’s programming with members of the entertainment industry, and serving as Volume Editor for Miguel Valenti’s seminal textbook, More Than a Movie: Ethics in Entertainment (Westview Press 2000). Trotta has produced, participated in and/or moderated dozens of panel discussions on media and social issues. These include those at the Chicago Screenwriter’s Festival, AFI Screenwriters Weekend, NATPE, Hawaii International Film Festival, Taos Talking Pictures, Association of Weekly Newspapers annual conference, and the Computer Game Developers Association.

Trotta began her career as a journalist. Her articles on media, the arts, travel and education have appeared in magazines, academic journals and publications internationally. She is author of Building Blocks: A Guide for Creating Children’s Educational Television (Mediascope Press, 1998). Her chapters in textbooks include: “Media Advocacy for the New Millennium” and "Children, TV and Advocacy Groups: A History and Analysis," both in the Sage Publications textbook series Handbook of Children and the Media (2002, 2003, forthcoming 2008). Her 2002 article Cold Case, Warm Heart chronicling the life of a Connecticut woman whose sister was murdered was featured in Northeast Magazine, and received a Special Recognition Award from the American Society of Journalists Recently she served as Artist in Residence at Arizona State University, where she wrote a biography of 1930s film star Mary Howard de Liagre.

Trotta is a former Executive Director of the Los Angeles-based Mediascope, a public policy and media research organization that worked for open communication between academia, government and the entertainment industry. During her tenure, Trotta expanded the program, research, policy and outreach efforts at this nonprofit, managed a $5 million budget and developed and edited major studies and publications for Mediascope Press. She has also served as a successful fund-raiser.

For nine years prior to moving to the West Coast, she was a senior public affairs officer at Yale University, counseling the university’s arts, humanities, law and social sciences faculty on all aspects of public and media relations. Also at Yale, Trotta was the primary media liaison for high-level visitors to the university, including President & Mrs. Clinton, the Dalai Lama, George Bush Sr., Shimon Peres, and other dignitaries, artists and literary lights of the world stage.

For many years, Trotta has operated a marketing and publicity concern, for which she manages projects for nonprofit organizations, classical musicians and film and theater companies. She was publicity manager for two European tours of symphony orchestras. She is associate producer on several feature film projects, and is writing two books. She is a former Governor of the Children’s Programming Peer Group of the Academy for Television Arts and Sciences and is a founding member of the American Media Literacy Association as well as the Entertainment Resources Professional Association.