A Visual Career Map
Creative people deserve the opportunity to build meaningful, sustainable careers.
Across every chapter, Laura’s leadership has strengthened the human foundations that allow creativity to flourish: community, education, mentorship, professional networks, economic opportunity, and systems of care.
Laura grew up in a family of modest means, shaped by two distinctly American journeys: a father who immigrated from Mexico and a mother from a small town in Northern Michigan. Education was understood not simply as achievement, but as the most reliable path to opportunity.
A lasting belief in access, possibility, and the power of opportunity to change a life.
At Notre Dame, Laura studied Film, Television & Theatre and completed the Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy. Here, her interests began to converge around a central question: how can communication and the arts shape culture, build empathy, and inspire change? Once her nonprofit career was established, she continued her executive education at Harvard.
The arts are not peripheral to society. They help us understand one another and imagine what comes next.
Laura’s early work let her explore writing, communications, marketing, entrepreneurship, and the emerging technology landscape. She learned how ideas travel, how communities form around them, and how innovation can challenge established ways of working.
Progress requires both a compelling idea and the relationships that help it take hold.
At Film Independent, Laura found her professional purpose: helping creative people build sustainable careers. She expanded annual giving, community development, and industry relationships while creating access to the networks, resources, and opportunities that emerging filmmakers needed to thrive.
Talent is everywhere. Access to opportunity, community, and professional networks is not.
Drawn to the intersection of imagination, technology, and public good, Laura joined XPRIZE. She expanded her work in philanthropy on a global scale, building alliances and engaging major funders around ambitious challenges designed to accelerate breakthroughs for humanity.
When bold ideas, capital, and unlikely partners align, seemingly intractable problems become solvable.
The Recording Academy recruited Laura to bridge professional association leadership, advocacy, and innovation. Leading Membership & Industry Relations, she transformed national operations, strengthened representation and governance, built hundreds of career-development programs, and helped advance landmark public policy for music creators.
An institution serves its community best when it listens, evolves, and converts collective voice into opportunity.
Promoted to lead MusiCares, Laura inherited a beloved GRAMMY organization ready for operational transformation. She built the team, strategy, systems, partnerships, and revenue model to scale its reach—expanding programs by more than 200% and guiding the creative community through historic crises.
Creative careers cannot endure without a trusted safety net: health, stability, emergency support, and dignified care.
After five high-performing years at MusiCares, Laura entered a deliberate transition toward her next chapter of executive leadership. In 2026, she joined the Entertainment Industry Foundation and She Is The Music, where she leads workforce development, mentorship, research, education, and cross-sector partnerships that expand opportunity for women across music.
The future of the creative economy should be shaped by talent—not limited by access, identity, or inherited networks.
The throughline
Laura’s career has moved across industries and institutions, but the purpose has remained constant: building the conditions in which creative people—and the communities they enrich—can thrive.
Return to laurasegura.org