Claudia Puig is president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and a nationally recognized entertainment journalist and film critic. Currently a critic for NPR’s Film Week show and podcast, she is also contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition. Puig was USA Today’s film critic for 18 years and host of the website’s The Screening Room video series. Prior to that she was a Los Angeles Times staff writer for 11 years. Claudia is currently program director for the Mendocino Film Festival and for Film Fest 919 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was previously program director for the Napa Valley Film Festival. She has served as a juror for film festivals from Ashland to Zurich. Much in demand as a moderator for entertainment industry Q&As, she has a consulting business specializing in cultural and diversity consulting and teaches a college class on Diversity in the Media. A native Spanish speaker, Claudia studied at Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. She has a B.A. in Communications Studies from UCLA and an M.A. in Communications from USC’s Annenberg School. She was recently featured in the Los Angeles Times as one of 14 film critics making media more inclusive and is the winner of the Roger Ebert Award for Excellence in Film Criticism from the African-American Critics Association.