Leah Latella is the digital communications specialist at the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, where she creates and promotes content across social media channels, email newsletters, websites, and other digital media. Latella works across the center to support communications for programming related to climate change, nuclear policy, mass violence and atrocity prevention, journalism and media, and global education for the local Iowa community.
Latella specializes in visual storytelling and has 20 years of experience as a journalist working in global newsrooms. Before joining the center, Latella worked as a visuals producer and photo editor for The Wall Street Journal, where she created original, multimedia news packages across digital platforms. She has collaborated on and produced award-winning projects during her time as a photo editor at ABC News, Time, Life, and Newsweek and has edited photography books for Time Inc. and Rizzoli New York. Latella began her professional photography career at local newspapers in North Carolina and New Mexico and as a photographer for the New York Yankees.
Latella regularly mentors university students as a guest lecturer and workshop producer and has taught visual journalism as an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She is an early childhood development educator and a certified master gardener with a focus in food security and environmental conservation. Latella is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.