Claudia Puig is president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and a nationally recognized entertainment journalist. She is currently a critic for NPR’s Film Week and a contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She was USA Today’s film critic for 18 years and host of USA Today’s video series The Screening Room. She was also a contributing film critic on KNBC-TV. Prior to that she was a staff writer for 11 years at the Los Angeles Times. Claudia was a speechwriter and diversity consultant for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is currently program director for the Mendocino Film Festival and FilmFest 919 in North Carolina and was consulting program director at the Napa Valley Film Festival. Claudia is also much in demand as a moderator for entertainment industry panels and Q&As, and has a consulting business specializing in film analysis and diversity issues. She is a native Spanish speaker and fluent in Italian, and studied at Cambridge University and at Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. Claudia has a B.A. in Communications Studies from UCLA and an M.A. in Communications from USC’s Annenberg School.