Valentina Pereda

Valentina Pereda is a freelance Video Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker based between El Salvador and Los Angeles covering security, migration, and human rights in the Northern Triangle and Mexico. She also shot and produced a three-part video series on Venezuela's current crisis, covering mass food shortages, state violence, and electoral fraud. She has shot and produced videos for HBO, The Economist, The Intercept, CBS News, among others. She is currently filming her first feature-documentary on the disarmament and reintegration of former 18 street gang members in San Salvador through religion. Her particular areas of interest are transnational gangs, the parallels between violence and social factors, and youth resilience in high-conflict areas. Formerly, Valentina lived in Washington, DC where she served in President Obama's communications team in the Administration and the White House, and worked on Central American migration and security, US-Latin America relations, the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the Colombian peace process, and others. She has an International Relations degree from the George Washington University, where she later returned to study documentary filmmaking.