Laura M. Browning

Strategic senior editorial leader

United States

Innovative and resourceful process-driven leader with robust history of writing, editing, and leadership achievements. I bring clarity and order to chaos.

Current: HubSpot Media
Past: Doha Debates, The A.V. Club

Portfolio

Select interviews

The A.V. Club
Judy Blume on Margaret, Davey, and coping with death and periods

Judy Blume has given voice to the hopes and fears of pre-teens and teenagers since before many of her readers were even born. Blume speaks frankly to the timeless trials of puberty, raising the ire of many a school board with books like Deenie, Forever… , and Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, all the while earning her status as one of America’s most beloved authors.

The A.V. Club
05/10/2016
Making A Murderer's Dean Strang and Jerry Buting are trying to change the system

Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, Steven Avery’s attorneys during his trial for Teresa Halbach’s murder, spoke to The A.V. Club about whether this case has rattled their faith in the U.S justice system and how they’re trying to use their newfound fame—more than a decade after the initial trial—to create lasting change.

Favorites

AV Club
Joss Whedon was never a feminist

And a lot of us trusted Whedon and his characters and, yes, even his performative feminism. But boy, it sure is a lot more comfortable to listen to a guy tell you he’s a feminist than listen to a lot of women telling you he’s not.

The A.V. Club

The A.V. Club
09/02/2014
Dr. Mütter's Marvels is narrative non-fiction at its best

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz shuns easy sensationalism and focuses on the real stories: the man himself, why he became so interested in these oddities, and how he shaped modern medicine, from plastic surgery to doctor-patient relationships to a then-new belief in pre- and post-surgical care.

AV Club
The A.V. Club's 20 best TV shows of 2017

The real power of Alias Grace is lightly shrouded by a period drama that takes place in 1840s Canada—which could be a slightly musty premise for all but hardcore history buffs. But the women at the core of the story—both the fictional ones on the screen and the real-life ones driving the miniseries—work in deft flashbacks to unfold both a murder mystery and an eerily familiar-looking patriarchy that robs women of their bodily autonomy and humanity.

AV Club
Slow Club's new album is sleepy, disjointed, and lovely

Slow Club’s latest album, One Day All Of This Won’t Matter Any More, languishes instead of soars. That’s partly by design: The album is filled with dark, midtempo tunes that veer between sleepy and ponderous, an unusual path for a group that, despite its name, has written some exuberant music.

AV Club
The 1950s zombie apocalypse, in folk song

Though the band sounds today about as calypso-inflected as a rutabaga, with not much more than a terrible clipped faux accent to celebrate “Zombie Jamboree”’s roots, this is the first version that became popular and even beloved in the States. The song that killed calypso, indeed.

The A.V. Club
01/22/2016
Shearwater steps into the space between wilderness and humanity

It’s not that Jet Plane And Oxbow is the depressed city cousin to Animal Joy; it’s that Meiburg has found a place where he has a view of both wilderness and humanity and is trying to make sense of all the complications that entails.

The A.V. Club
08/21/2017
Joss Whedon was never a feminist

And a lot of us trusted Whedon and his characters and, yes, even his performative feminism. But boy, it sure is a lot more comfortable to listen to a guy tell you he’s a feminist than listen to a lot of women telling you he’s not.

The A.V. Club
12/02/2018
Dirty John tells a terrifying story with a lot of melodrama and not much else

Consuming true-crime as pop culture already requires some private moral negotiation of finding entertainment in somebody else’s trauma; when that trauma isn’t framed within a larger purpose, it’s a slippery slope into popping popcorn while watching a barely fictionalized man prey on a woman and her family.

The A.V. Club
Making A Murderer's Dean Strang and Jerry Buting are trying to change the system

Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, Avery’s attorneys during his trial for Halbach’s murder, spoke to The A.V. Club about whether this case has rattled their faith in the U.S justice system and how they’re trying to use their newfound fame—more than a decade after the initial trial—to create lasting change.

The A.V. Club
01/03/2019
Full tank of gas and a '69 Tempest: An hour of great mainstream country from the '80s and '90s

Country music builds many of its narratives around loves lost and found, and given the traditional gender roles in the first half of the 20th century, most of those were sung by men. As more women found mainstream success, the oft-misogynist tone of country music slowly made room for songs that weren’t about men pining after women, as with Martina McBride’s celebratory 1993 hit “Independence Day,” in which the narrator’s mother ends an abusive relationship by burning down the house.

HubSpot Media

Hubspot
Marketing for the lulz

We talked to Hootsuite creative brand director Hassan S. Ali to get tips on how to use comedy in marketing.

Hubspot
How to Use Google's AI Overviews for Search

We talked to the pros - including an SEO expert at HubSpot and the senior product director of AI Overviews at Google - to answer questions about Google's AI search you didn't even know you had.

Doha Debates

Doha Debates
09/17/2020
Defining global cooperation

To say that the world was different then is to understate the sheer volume and ingenuity of the technological and creative innovations of the late 20th century. When representatives of those countries met at Bretton Woods, the leaders were living in a world where a vaccine for polio, which affected nearly half a million children a year, was still a decade away. Marvel Comics wouldn’t invent the Spider-Man or Incredible Hulk characters for nearly two more decades.

Speaking Engagements