About
Valerie Vande Panne is a multi-hyphenate: actor, producer, writer, and publisher.
As an actor, she can be seen in Zero Day (Netflix) and First Wives Club (BET+), among other streaming shows.
She has produced two documentaries, Papa Noel and More Joy Less Pain. She has also appeared in National Lampoon’s The Final Edition podcast, as both script writer and voice. Her IMDb page is here.
She is also the founder of FryBread.org.
Ms. Vande Panne is a retired award-winning reporter and editor. In her past life in news media, she was the Managing Editor of Native News Online, a former Editor-in-Chief of Detroit’s alt-weekly, the Metro Times, and a former News Editor of High Times magazine.
As a reporter, her work was published by Bloomberg, the Boston Phoenix, Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard Gazette, Harvard Law Today, In These Times, Next City, Politico, Reuters, Salon, and the Village Voice, among many other publications. She also contributed to The New York Times. Much of this journalistic work covered Indigenous restoration and reconciliation, economics, smart urban planning, media, the environment, and politics. Her work appeared in Next City’s 2019 and 2020 Solutions of the Year. She is also a former environmental reporter for the NPR and PBS affiliate WGCU in Southwest Florida. She regularly appeared on Virtual Unreality, airing weekly on 2RRR 88.5 in Sydney, Australia.
Ms. Vande Panne spent many years in the non-profit sector, working on criminal justice reform, the legalization of marijuana, and an end to the war on drugs. She facilitated the first-ever global summit on ending the drug war, “Saliendo de las Sombras,” held in Mérida, Mexico in 2003. She has served as a non-attorney member of the Drugs and the Law committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. She also managed the campaign office of Robert Morgenthau’s successful, final run for re-election as New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney.
She is also the founder and former director of Blackbird Literacy, a volunteer-run group distributing books to Detroit residents.
In her early days, she was a bartender at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans and at Siberia in New York City.
Ms. Vande Panne received her high school equivalency diploma from the state of New York in 2008 and attended Harvard University. She is of mixed-race ancestry: Mexican, Native American (unenrolled Southwestern & Texas tribes), and White (including French-Canadian).
She travels extensively throughout the Americas.