F. Miguel Valenti has been an independent producer, director and entertainment attorney for 25 years. A Yale-trained scholar, Valenti has maintained an interest in academia, and now serves as Lincoln Professor of Ethics and the Arts at Arizona State University as well as the head of ASU’s exciting new Film and Media Production Program.

A member of the ASU Herberger College of the Arts faculty since 2004, Valenti founded the Film & Media Production Program in 2006 and is Assistant Director of the School of Theatre and Film. The ASU Film Production Program is the first in the nation to incorporate principles of ethical decision-making into a hands-on production program while preserving First Amendment values. The program is based in the latest cutting edge digital technologies and focuses on narrative storytelling. Much of the theoretical underpinning of the program is based on Valenti’s book, More Than a Movie, which outlines ethical issues surrounding film and television production.

Valenti has recently been appointed by the Arizona Governor as a Commissioner of the Arizona Governor’s Film and Television Commission.

Based in New York, Los Angeles and Phoenix, Valenti’s film credits include Downcity, currently in pre-production for Warner Bros., The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (Tri-Star Pictures, 2004); and, Netherbeast Incorporated, a comedy starring Robert Wagner, Judd Nelson, Jason Mewes, Darrell Hammond and Dave Foley. Valenti also produced Vig (aka The Money Kings) starring Peter Falk, Timothy Hutton and Freddie Prinze, Jr. (Barbra Streisand’s Barwood Films & LionsGate).

Valenti directed and produced a horror thriller, Eyes of the Woods and produced a mafia comedy, Johnny Slade’s Greatest Hits. He co-wrote, directed and produced a spoof, Fear & Clothing. Other producing credits include Abracadabra, Master of the Manor, (Valenti also co-wrote with Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction Doug Wright (Quills); also, The Refrigerator, Night Gathering, Scarlatti Birthday Party and Birth of Tragedy. Other credits include Fernando Valenti: A Man of Music.

Valenti is former Managing Partner of The Management Company, whose clients include noted writers, producers and directors in film, television and theatre. He specializes in working with young writers and has expertise in all aspects of development, creative packaging and producing, as well as entertainment industry business and legal matters.

Theatrical credits include producing premieres of March Morning Frost and Sacrament and directing/producing premieres of Vig (winner of three Drama-Logue awards, including “Best Play/Best Playwright”), Machiavelli’s Handbag, a new translation of The Cherry Orchard, Shakespeare Enigmatique, and When The Wine Is Cold. Valenti served as company manager for director/choreographer Martha Clarke’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Valenti created and directed a unique national conference, film festival and digital workshop surrounding issues of ethics in entertainment entitled E2: Ethics of Entertainment. A vast array of guests included Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, novelists (Clive Cussler), scholars (Harry Frankfurt, Benjamin Barber) industry experts (Glenn Mazzara, Julian Krainin, Michael Switzer) and others.

He also is actively participating in the ASU President’s Community Enrichment Program, serves on numerous school and college committees and is a member of the Lincoln Professor’s Council and Barrett Honors Disciplinary Faculty.

Valenti has been invited to lecture for consecutive summers at the prestigious Chautauqua Institute. He has served as a Guest Fellow of Yale College and coordinated a series of production seminars for Yale University. He has served as moderator as well as taught acting classes and mentored acting students in Los Angeles and New York.

Valenti graduated Yale College in 1980, cum laude, and Yale Law School in 1983. After five years practicing mergers & acquisitions, corporate and entertainment law at Shearman & Sterling and at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom - two leading international law firms - Valenti left law firm legal practice to pursue film and theatrical production. He is a charter member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Motion Pictures and Video.

He has created courses on the economic, marketing & social realities of the contemporary film and television industries and the future of media at his alma mater and taught producing and the ethics of entertainment at UCLA. At ASU, he teaches Sex and Violence in Film and TV, Production, Independent Film, Business Ethics and Screenwriting, as well as an advanced seminar in entertainment law and practice at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He also has developed an entire ethics in Entertainment curriculum upon which the film program is based. He was nominated for the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Parents’ Association Professor of the Year honors at ASU.

Valenti is President of Valenti Entertainment Incorporated, an arts production and development concern founded in 1996. He is the son of internationally renowned harpsichordist Fernando Valenti.