Jodi Leib Coden

Jodi Leib Coden, MA, RDT, CDP, CATP is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and Registered Drama Therapist, with additional certifications as a Certified Dementia Practitioner and Certified Child & Adolescent Trauma Professional. After earning her Bachelor of Arts in Film and Video Studies from University of Michigan, Jodi began her career in Los Angeles in 1994 as an independent filmmaker, first working in film production and then writing, producing and directing her own films and creative projects. Her first short film garnered positive recognition and received the audience award at the Wine Country Film Festival in 1997, and screened at many other film festivals and venues including the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

From 2001 – 2007, and periodically after that, Jodi hosted and produced Talk It Out with Jodi Leib, first an independent cable program, and then a published magazine column in All Access Magazine and online at TalkItOut.tv. Through Talk It Out, Jodi has interviewed many musicians and political activists including Gloria Steinem, the Black Eyed Peas, Indigo Girls and Howard Dean, in-depth about various social causes. She covered the March For Women’s Lives in 2004 and FarmAid in 2006.

In 2010, Jodi completed her Master of Arts in Drama Therapy from Leslie University, and began using her artistic talents to further healing in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury. Additionally, she published the chapter Drama Therapy for Acting Blocks in the book The Heart and Soul of Psychotherapy: A Transpersonal Approach through Theater Arts for her work helping actors to remove creative blocks due to fear, anxiety and depression using drama therapy modalities. As a result, Jodi created a new form of acting training that enriches performance by helping actors, as a drama therapist, to work through inner conflicts.

Throughout her professional career, Jodi has expressed herself as a painter and photographer. Her work has exhibited in numerous group shows in several cities including New York, the Hamptons, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Connecticut. One of her photographs, a feminist work, is part of the permanent collection within the first LGBTQ art museum in the world, the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York. Jodi has donated many artworks to charity auctions including GLAAD, JDRF, ADL, and Doing Art Together (The Met).

As a screenwriter, Jodi has been developing a fictional motion picture called Monday’s Child, which explores how overturning Roe v. Wade would impact a community of women facing complicated pregnancies. She produced a staged reading in New York in 2009 with actors and has worked with numerous screenplay consultants to ensure subject matter accuracy. Consultants have included women with complicated pregnancies, leading reproductive rights activists, medical providers, legal scholars, and religious leaders. She is currently in the process of fundraising and casting.

Jodi currently lives in Detroit with her husband and blended family.