"The Making of a Dream: How a Group of Young Undocumented Immigrants Helped Change What it Means to be American," is Laura's first book. It is based on nearly two decades of reporting on immigration, politics, and policy, much of it done while she was a staff writer for The Associated Press.
Previously, Laura also served as Vice President for Special Projects & Editorial Strategy at Univision’s English-language Fusion Network in Miami, and as a senior story editor for the network's award-winning TV and digital investigative teams.
Laura broke into journalism covering the end of the Guatemalan Civil War and has reported from Cuba and throughout Central America. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Providence Journal Bulletin, and the Los Angeles Times, among other outlets. In 2005, she was offered the opportunity to create the Hispanic Affairs beat for the AP, and two years later she won the Associated Press Managing Editors Award for the beat. Her reporting has garnered multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards. While at Fusion, she worked on the duPont award-winning documentary, "The Naked Truth: Death by Fentanyl"; the Polk Award-winning coverage of the Panama Papers; and the Emmy-nominated documentary, "Prison Kids: America's Crime on Children."
Laura conceived of "The Making of a Dream" during a 2013 Harvard University Nieman Foundation for Journalism fellowship. She recently decamped from Miami to return to her hometown of Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and two children.