Dr. Laura Castañeda

Dr. Laura Castañeda, Ed.D. is a Professor of Professional Practice and the Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Access at Annenberg. She has been a staff writer and columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News, and a staff writer and editor at The Associated Press in San Francisco, New York and Mexico. She has freelanced for a range of publications including The New York Times, NBC Latino.com, USA Today’s Hispanic Living, Go Travel and Back to School magazines, and TheAtlantic.com, among others. Scholarly articles have appeared in the journals Media Studies and Journalism and Mass Communication Educator. She co-authored “The Latino Guide to Personal Money Management” (Bloomberg Press 1999) and co-edited “News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity” (Sage Publications 2005).

Castañeda was awarded the 2019 Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship by the American Society of News Editors in recognition of an educator's outstanding efforts to encourage students of color in the field of journalism. She earned undergraduate degrees in journalism and international relations from USC, a master’s degree in international political economy from Columbia University and was awarded a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in business and economics reporting from Columbia. Her doctorate is from USC’s Rossier School of Education. She also was named one of the nation’s 10 journalism educators who is “making a difference” by Crain’s NewsPro magazine in 2018 and named a “Disruptive Educator” by CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism in 2017. Early in her academic career, she won the Baskett Mosse Award given to an outstanding young or mid-career faculty member from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She also served as Associate Director of the J-School for four years.