Caty Borum Chattoo

Roles: Special Guest

Caty Borum Chattoo is Executive in Residence in the School of Communication at American University. As a social-change communication specialist and media producer, she has been engaged as a senior campaign strategist, documentary producer and social-impact research director with media companies, nonprofit organizations and foundations, most recently including Participant Media, Link TV, KCETLink, Working Films and more. She has produced two theatrical documentary feature films (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and The After Party), a TV documentary and transmedia series (Stand Up Planet), multiple half-hour documentary TV specials, a seven-part documentary TV series, and multiple PSA campaigns designed for social change on issues ranging from global poverty to human rights. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, PBS Media Shift and Impatient Optimists (Gates Foundation blog), and her documentaries have aired on the Sundance Channel, Pivot, NDTV (India), PBS World, Link TV, KCET and more.

Previously, she was a senior vice president in behavior-change communication at FleishmanHillard International Communications in Washington, D.C., where she served on the senior leadership team for a national teen prescription drug abuse campaign that was awarded the Public Relations Society of America’s highest honor, the Silver Anvil for Public Service. In Los Angeles, she was a longtime collaborator with TV producer Norman Lear as a producer and a founding director of Declare Yourself, a national youth civic engagement campaign; and special projects director at the USC Norman Lear Center, a research center that examines the social impact of entertainment. She was also a program officer in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Entertainment Media & Public Health program, where she managed TV partnerships with MTV and BET for the Foundation’s HIV awareness campaign; and a media fellow in civic journalism at The Philadelphia Inquirer.