Bio
Content wrangler Laura Blum serves corporate, nonprofit and individual clients across five continents. Based in New York, she brings her story expertise to the shaping of books, films, web content and marketing collateral.
Laura co-edited Esther Perel's global bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006) and instant New York Times bestseller The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity (2017). Other book credits include ghostwriting the national bestseller The Thanksgiving Celebration: New Traditions for America's Family Feast and contributing to More Than a Movie: Ethics in Entertainment. Currently, she is ghostwriting a professional memoir for the founder and CEO of a major global science company.
Laura also serves as head of strategic communications for Herakles Club Estates Co., Ltd, with services ranging from writing and editing to strategy consulting for a megaresort and nature conservancy project in Asia. In her previous position as head of film and TV development at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, she developed, acquired and marketed films in addition to advising on such scripts and works-in-progress as Idlewild and multiple award winner Béla Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart. Her production credits include the independent thriller The Cry, the documentary Becoming Barack, the concert film P!nk Live in Europe and the musical biography John Denver Remembered. Additionally, she has co-produced numerous livestream broadcasts for an official media partner of Consumer Electronics Show.
Laura has long been a go-to speaker at forums ranging from Talk Cinema to Wesleyan University to Cinema Arts Centre's Preview Club to the Gold Coast Cinema Series, consistently earning raves and “Best Speaker” prizes. She covers movies and art for the Grumbacher arts site thalo.com and on her blog at filmfestivals.com. Her articles have also appeared in Adweek magazine, where she was a staff media reporter, as well as in USA Today, Display and Design Ideas Magazine and the websites of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Guggenheim Museum, among other outlets.
Wearing her curator hat, Laura has spearheaded critically acclaimed film series for such prestigious entities as the Film at Lincoln Center, HBO, Directors Guild of America, David Rockefeller’s Americas Society and UJA-JCC Greenwich’s Davis Film Festival. From 2014-2017 she directed an annual film showcase at the University of Hawaii’s Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity, where her popular keynote, Ten Films That Shook the World, explored the portrayal of disability and diversity in filmed entertainment. She was tapped to curate the 2017 Pac Rim, including a neuroscience strand inspired by her 2016 presentation at the International Forum on the Human Rights of People with Disabilities: Storytelling: Rx for the Empathy Gap?
In her early career as political analyst, Laura spent nearly a decade writing and reporting in the Middle East, North Africa and France, spanning positions as author and researcher with The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and The Hebrew University’s Truman Institute.
Laura holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern and International Affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she earned Academic Honors and a tuition scholarship, and a B.A. in History and Art Design from Duke University. She is fluent in French, Spanish and Hebrew, and proficient in Arabic.