Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud (Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the School of Journalism and Media, as well as the founding and current Director of the Center for Media Engagement in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. The Center for Media Engagement seeks to understand and improve the media ecosystem for the benefit of democracy. Stroud is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. She is part of New _Public, an initiative to re-envision digital public life (newpublic.org), and a co-academic lead on the U.S. 2020 Facebook & Instagram Election Study. Stroud’s research on the media’s role in a democracy has received numerous national and international awards, including the International Communication Association (ICA)'s prestigious Outstanding Book Award for her book Niche News: The Politics of News Choice, and the inaugural Public Engagement Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the ICA. She serves on the editorial boards of seven academic journals and the advisory board of SciLine, a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her research has appeared in Science, Nature, the Journal of Communication, Journalism, Political Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and New Media & Society. Stroud twice received the Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the Communication Studies Graduate Community.