Caty Borum, co-producer of the Wal-Mart documentary, has focused her career on building public awareness of social issues and creating social change through philanthropy and entertainment media.

As producer/writer and director of special projects with producer Norman Lear, she directs/produces socially conscious video and Web projects, and developed national curriculum outreach programs dealing with young people and civic participation as part of Declare Yourself, a nonprofit, nonpartisan young voter awareness campaign. With Norman Lear, she created and produced the short film, Let's Go Voting, which was distributed as a free public service program to 20 million high school students across the country to teach young people how to register and vote for the first time. She also co-produced a series of voter registration public service announcements on Comedy Central for the 2004 election, and was an associate producer on Marc Levin's documentary Citizen Andre, a film about young people and civic participation (currently in post-production).

With partner Brian Gerber, Caty directed and produced a documentary about the jobs crisis in America in 2004. The short film, Show Us the Jobs: A Bus Tour Through America's Heartland, has been distributed to grassroots organizers around the country, and it has been used strategically to raise awareness of the issue and to mobilize for policy change.

Prior to this work, she worked as senior producer for The Norman Lear Center, where she co-directed Media, Citizens and Democracy, an entertainment industry project that examined the role of entertainment media on portrayals of civic engagement; as a public interest program director at the Center for Media Education in Washington, D.C.; and as a program officer at the Kaiser Family Foundation's Entertainment Media and Public Health program, where she focused on HIV awareness for young people through entertainment media.

Caty holds a bachelor's degree in communication from Virginia Tech; a master's degree in communication (concentration on civic journalism) from the University of Pennsylvania; and has completed coursework towards her master of fine arts degree in film production from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television in Los Angeles.

See Also: Caty's experience on location in Missouri with Red & Dee Esry.