Laurie Meadoff

Laurie Meadoff is a cultural strategist, three-time Emmy-nominated Executive Producer, and one of the most enduring forces in youth empowerment, media, and social innovation of the past four decades. She founded The CityKids Foundation in 1985 — now celebrating 40 years of empowering young leaders through art and activism.

Her work has always lived at the intersection of the creative and the consequential. In the late 1980s, she co-created CityKids Speak on Liberty with the artist Keith Haring, giving voice to over 1,000 young New Yorkers at a pivotal cultural moment — an art piece that went on to feature behind Paul McCartney's Freedom Tour, carrying their voices to the world. The sale of this phenomenal piece of art will fund the next 40 years of CityKids: The Global School of Artivism. That same instinct for connection — between people, between ideas, between generations — has defined everything Laurie has built since.

As a media producer, Laurie's credits span MTV, ABC, Sundance Channel, National Geographic, and a host of international broadcasters. Her global television series Chat the Planet reached 350 million viewers; her digital series Hometown Baghdad earned three Webby Awards for its unflinching portrayal of young lives inside a war zone. She received Emmy nominations for Take Back the Mic: World Cup of Hip Hop and the ABC series CityKids.

Recognized by the Brookings Institution for cultural diplomacy, part of the Rockefeller Fellowship Next Generation Leadership group, and featured on Oprah, CNN, NPR, the Today Show, and in The New York Times — Laurie has spent a career not seeking the spotlight, but directing it onto the people and causes that most deserve it.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education and Art History and a Master's in Educational Theater from New York University.