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Laureen Scharps, a native Californian, received her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from UCLA and her Masters of Arts in Cinema from the University of Southern California. After some years in film and television production with Walt Disney Studios and Columbia Pictures Television, she moved overseas and has been working as a freelance English teacher since 1998. Laureen’s experience with FAWCO started in 1994 when she became AIWC Düsseldorf’s FAWCO Rep - a post she continued when she moved to Frankfurt in 1996 and came back to in 2018 after nearly a 20-year break. She has attended seven FAWCO conferences, the first being 1996 in Bad Homburg. Her first regional meeting was one that she co-organized - just this year in Frankfurt. Laureen served as the FAWCO Foundation Relief and Development Chair (1999-2001), joined the FAWCO US Voting Committee in 2018 and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Team in 2021. During the pandemic, Laureen organized the “Women Speak Up about Race” virtual panel series (2020-21), and this year, she serves as an integral member of the Target Project 5 Environment Selection Committee (2022).