Laura Purdy was born in Austin, Texas and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. After receiving her BA in English with a minor in Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Purdy moved to San Francisco and began making experimental shorts receiving an MFA from San Francisco State University. Before graduating, Purdy received a Student Academy Award nomination and CSU Honorable Mention for Best Experimental Film. Her experimental films have screened in the U.S. and internationally, at festivals in New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, as well as Peru, Mexico, Spain, and Austria.
For many years, Purdy produced and directed award-winning documentaries and media experiences for the Autry Museum of the American West. Notably, she led a groundbreaking multimedia partnership with the museum, PBS local station KCET, and California Indigenous communities, producing Tending the Wild, a documentary about the significance of traditional Indigenous knowledge in tackling today’s environmental crisis–a knowledge that was disparaged by 20th century science. It achieved widespread exposure through multiple channels, TV broadcast, web, and museum exhibitions. The documentary earned Purdy an Emmy Award in 2017. Its impact led to the development of a spin-off series Tending Nature and earned her a second Emmy Award in 2021.