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Laura Angélica Simón is a Los Angeles-based writer and director. Born in Mexico to parents from Sinaloa and Sonora, Spanish is her first language. At age six, she moved to the U.S., and by ten, her parents launched a paletas business at El Mercado in East L.A. Simón helped support her family by selling popsicles on neighborhood street corners. After earning a scholarship to Claremont McKenna College in California, she became the first in her family to attend college.
Her personal immigration journey inspired her debut film, the documentary Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary. The Rockefeller Foundation recognized it as one of the "ten most important films on American race relations." The documentary received multiple major awards, including the Sundance Film Festival's "Freedom of Expression Award" and the duPont-Columbia Award, bestowed by the committee responsible for Pulitzer Prize selections.
Simón’s Hollywood career took off when she was selected as one of ten fellows from 3,000 applicants for the Disney Screenwriting Fellowship. She became the first Mexican-born woman to write a produced Hollywood film and receive an Emmy nomination.
She has created both fiction and nonfiction content for 20th Century Fox, MGM Pictures, Discovery Channel, Walt Disney Motion Pictures, ABC Family, VH1/MTV Films, New Line Pictures, PBS Independent Documentary Series, and Virgin/MTV's Rock the Vote campaigns. Her written work spans topics such as the restitution of Klimt paintings from Austria to their rightful Jewish heirs.
Her company, Café de Nadie Productions, produces film, television, documentary, and podcast content. Additionally, she serves as a guest lecturer in Latine Studies at Claremont McKenna College.
