Caty Borum is Executive Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI), a creative innovation lab and research center based at AU’s School of Communication (SOC) that creates, showcases, and studies entertainment for social change, and Professor at SOC. She is an award-winning media producer, engaged scholar, and author and co-author of four books about entertainment media and social change: A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, with co-author Lauren Feldman (foreword by Norman Lear, University of California Press); Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change (Oxford University Press), winner of the 2021 Broadcast Education Association Book Award; The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power (NYU Press); and Radical Reality: Documentary Storytelling and the Global Fight for Social Justice, with co-author David Conrad-Perez. In 2021, she won American University’s annual “Outstanding Scholarship, Research, Creative Activity, and Other Professional Contributions Award,” a refereed honor that recognizes extraordinary faculty achievement. As a documentary producer, her films and TV programs have aired internationally and nationally, across TV, streaming, and theaters. In 2020, she was named to DOC NYC’s inaugural list of New Documentary Leaders, a peer-selected film industry award given to 16 global leaders who have made a substantial positive impact on the field. Professor Borum’s research and creative works have received six Anthem Awards (recognizing purpose-driven work) from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences; one Telly Award; and academic awards and honors from the International Communication Association, Broadcast Education Association, Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, Mass Communication and Society, and others.

Under Professor Borum’s leadership, CMSI founded and directs several large-scale national and international comedy and human rights programs: the Yes, And…Laughter Lab (co-directed with Moore + Associates), a first-of-its-kind creative incubator of comedy for social justice, with robust partnerships across the entertainment industry, including Netflix, Amazon, NBC Universal, ViacomCBS, and leading social justice organizations; and Comedy ThinkTanks and GoodLaugh, which bring together professional comedians and human rights organizations for comedy co-creation, convenings, and research. Borum’s creative media production and research has been supported by dozens of external grants from funders that include the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, National Endowment for the Arts, Luminate, Open Society Foundations, Perspective Fund, Pop Culture Collaborative, Comedy Central, McNulty Foundation, Unbound Philanthropy, Doris Duke Foundation, Independent Television Service, Argosy Foundation, Paramount Global, the Fledging Fund, and others.

Prior to her academic life, Borum was senior vice president in the social impact practice group at FleishmanHillard International Communications in Washington, D.C., where she and her team won the strategic communication industry’s highest honor, the Silver Anvil for Public Service. In Los Angeles, she was a longtime collaborator with legendary TV producer and philanthropist/activist Norman Lear, where she served as a philanthropy director and producer. She was also the program officer in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Entertainment Media & Public Health program, where she managed HIV-awareness partnership program production, TV specials and PSA campaigns with MTV and BET; project director and researcher at the Center for Media Education; and fellow in civic journalism at The Philadelphia Inquirer.