Meet the Team

  • Cristina Leonella Fard

  • Founder/Communications Director

Cristina Leonella Fard is a copywriter and communications consultant  based out of Los Angeles, California. Working on multimillion dollar accounts throughout the US and Europe, she has managed everything from site visits, trade shows, and high profile VIPs to executive fundraising campaigns, media relations, and film production/distribution. She’s worked on statewide political campaigns, is a certified pollster, and is a Lexis/Nexis research junkie. In 2012, after a year living abroad, Cristina finished her studies at the London School of Economics where she is a candidate for her MSc in Politics and Communications.

Graduating Cum Laude from Loyola Marymount University with a bachelors degree in Political Science and a certificate in Journalism, Cristina was a highly (over)active member of her campus community. Her honors thesis focused on new media technologies and political mobilization in authoritarian regimes, which in lay terms means she studied the Iranian Twitter Revolution, the Arab Spring, and… all that jazz.

While at LMU, she was selected among a highly competitive candidate pool to work in conjunction with nationally recognized executive leadership studies scholar Dr. Michael Genovese, Director of the Institute for Leadership Studies (ILS) @LMU, author of more than a dozen internationally acclaimed books, and frequent network television contributor. She promoted, executed, and hosted the Annual Leadership and Democracy Conference, including guests such as former Massachusetts Governor and Presidential Nominee, Michael Dukakis. She oversaw the national publishing of Corruption in American Politics, a collection of academic papers from the “Dilemmas of Democracy” Conference .  Cristina led a delegation of 20 LMU students to attend a two week seminar at the Washington Center in Washington D.C. in conjunction with attending Barack Obama’s historical presidential inauguration in 2008.

While in D.C. she was featured live on C-SPAN with Brian Lamb. 

In addition, Cristina was inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society, and was a Mentor at the Peace Jam Conference – featuring Nobel Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi, Betty Williams, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and Jody Williams. She was awarded an Oxford University Summer Scholars scholarship in 2008, a Washington Center scholarship in 2009, a Hansard Society Fellowship in 2010, and a Jewish Studies Scholarship in 2011. That same year, she  was selected to co-lead 20 students on an interfaith tour to Israel. Their journey in the holy land resulted in a publication featuring original poems, photographs, and articles.

Even though her background seems highly political, and she does wish life were an episode of The West Wing, Cristina’s true passion lies in storytelling. She believes in the power of ideas as transformative entities and knows that everything can be positioned as a product, including ideas. The only thing needed is a good story, a narrative that has impact and passion yet can be controlled. Packaging her clients needs as “products to sell” means she understands the importance of never devaluing the brand by over saturating the market. If you are a local cafe or a trans-national corporation, each word is chosen with a strategic outcome in mind.

The goal is the same: to tell the story. 

  • Rod DiPietro Lundgren

  • Business Director

A proud Boston native, Rod DiPietro Lundgren received his Bachelor’s degree in Screenwriting from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.  During his four years, Rod filmed several short films and two series for the ROAR Network (LMU’s television network).  A ten-minute play he wrote was selected as an Alternate Selection in the 2008 Kennedy Centre American College Theatre Festival.  He worked at several networks and studios in entertainment, including NBC Universal, Universal Pictures, Syfy and USA Network.  Rod then set his sights on a Masters degree in Innovation, Creativity & Entrepreneurship from Newcastle University Business School in England, where his studies included marketing, finance, product design, strategic management, and more.  While there, he co-founded a business to promote student artists and was mentored by one of the best PR executives in the region, who handled game day press for the Newcastle United football team.

As Business Director for Leonella Media, Rod handles operations and coordinates our large staff of contributors and consultants in California and in our satellite offices in Washington D.C. and London. In addition to his role at Leonella Media, Rod works in international development at NBC/Universal.