Abby Berendt Lavoi is an award-winning Writer, Director and Producer. She directed the multi-award-winning feature documentary Roots of Fire which earned the prestigious Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Documentary of the Year Award and screened at over 25 film festivals. She is currently in development on the sequel, and in production on an episodic spinoff series, Dry Bones. She was the Showrunner of the 12 episode half-hour unscripted streaming series,  My Amazing Cheap Date: New Orleans. 

Her work has screened at over 35 film festivals and has received awards and honors from the New Orleans Film Festival, Hot Springs Doc Fest, SIFF, Hawaii International Film Festival, SFIndieFest, Indie Memphis, the Telly Awards, Promax, and many others. Her TV staff credits include MTV, TVLand, Nick@Nite, Nickelodeon, and Current TV. Her screenwriting work has been recognized at Austin Film Festival, CineStory, and Stowe Story Labs. In 2021, she was awarded the Women in Film and Television’s Resilient Woman Award. Her series, It’s a Rough Life, was a finalist in the 2014 NYTVF History Channel Unscripted Development Pipeline. Her team won Best Film at the San Francisco 48 Hour Film Festival in 2012, and in 2011 she won Best Editor at Mockfest for the film Rolled, which she also produced. She is a member of Film Fatales, Free the Bid / Free the Work, Women in Film & Television (WiFT) and Cinefemme.

Since 2008, she has successfully run Lavoi Creative, a full service creative agency and production studio. She has created video work for Google, YouTube (Corporate), Pandora Internet Radio, SiriusXM, Autodesk, Squarespace, MindBodyGreen, Vox, SFMOMA, as well as many other companies and various political campaigns. 

Abby also has an in-depth background in marketing and promotions, spearheading campaigns for HarperCollins Publishers, working in the Sony Music Alternative Marketing Department, and writing and producing promos for several cable networks. She was born and raised in Greeley, CO, and has lived in New York City, San Francisco, and New Orleans. She is a survivor of Stage 3 Breast Cancer, and is the mother to a rambunctious and imaginative little girl. Her fundamental passion is to tell creative, socially relevant, and cinematically engaging stories.